[00:00:00.00] - Gordon
Hello.

[00:00:09.11] - Taylor
Hello.

[00:00:09.28] - Gordon
My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.

[00:00:11.29] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.

[00:00:13.25] - Gordon
And welcome to "This Week With Taylor and Gordon," a weekly podcast and vidcast, where we talk about things that have affected our businesses over the last seven days. And thank you very much for joining us. We're back again.

[00:00:25.28] - Taylor
We are.

[00:00:26.13] - Gordon
How's your week been, first of all?

[00:00:27.28] - Taylor
It's been good.

[00:00:28.25] - Gordon
Has it been busy? Have you been doing anything exciting?

[00:00:33.01] - Taylor
Just working, mainly. Hopefully, getting back into the gym from next week.

[00:00:37.28] - Gordon
Lovely. Very good. Yeah, my week has been very busy as well. I've been prompting at a pantomime and having some very late nights and then getting back into... The problem I have with having a few late nights is that my body clock changes and then all of a sudden I want to get up at half past 9 and go to bed at 2 o'clock in the morning, and it takes about a week or so for me to get back to normal. Anyway, let's get straight into our topics. Would you like to go first or shall I?

[00:01:10.11] - Taylor
I'll go first this week.

[00:01:11.07] - Gordon
Off you go.

[00:01:12.12] - Taylor
This week, I want to talk about the Herman Miller Aeron Remastered Chair. Herman Miller is a pretty recognisable name in the chair space. They are what most would consider the gold standard for office chairs in terms of ergonomics, comfort, and just all-around the best chair. A lot of this comes down to the fact that every single part of the chair is fully adjustable and configurable. And so you can essentially adjust it exactly to the tension that you want, the height, the tilt, even to the back compression that it is on it is set. And so it basically can be super comfy compared to a normal chair. The other thing is it's very very high quality. And it's something that I've always seen, always liked the idea of, but they're very expensive. They are over £1,000 when you buy them new. And I was looking at Facebook marketplace and just keeping an eye on it. There was one that came up. It was about an hour's drive from me, and it was a pretty good price. It turns out the guy was essentially from another country. He came over to work and then was going back and was getting rid of his stuff, selling it because he couldn't take it with him.

[00:02:45.07] - Taylor
He tried to ask if I wanted any monitors, which I don't need because I have two already. But it made purchasing, because it was quite an expensive item, made me feel a bit more reassured because he wasn't getting rid of it because it was broken or there was something wrong with it. He was just getting rid of it because he couldn't take it with him. I then got home after driving the hour trip back. They have stickers on all authentic and real chairs. It had a manufacturer's date, which was June of 2025, so not even a year old. It had obviously all of the warranty and the serial number and things like that. It is really, really comfortable. It's a lot more expensive than a normal chair would cost you, but you can tell the difference. Moving the chair across the floor is pretty much silent. There's no rattling, there's no clunkiness. It's a solid bit of material and kit. It doesn't come with a backrest, but there is a third-party product called the Atlas Headrest, which is basically, again, the go-to for headrests for Herman Miller. They're pretty much exclusively built for Herman Miller's.

[00:04:09.09] - Taylor
They run about £150 on their own. But again, they have the same level of standard as the Herman Miller's chairs do. I have a couple of friends who have been using it and have had them for a while, and they said, "they're a chair for life. You buy it once and you don't really need to buy another one." They've had it for six years, and they said it still looks the same as when they first got it.

[00:04:36.11] - Gordon
That's very good. And in fact, if I move my head, you might be able to see an outline of it there. Is that it?

[00:04:42.26] - Gordon
It's there. It's that one there. And for those who are listening, you'll have to go and watch the video if you want to see it. To be fair, it's not very easy to see. It's just a shadow, but it is there behind us, which means you've got a spare chair which you're going to pass on to someone else, aren't you?

[00:04:58.22] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:04:59.05] - Gordon
Which is good. And the headrest is important to you, is it? Because I would have thought if you're working in a chair, normally you're going to be sitting forward a bit. I don't really use the back of my chair unless I'm sitting back watching something. But I guess if you're watching something, the headrest is going to be useful.

[00:05:20.04] - Taylor
Yeah, it's also there when you lean back, it means the height of the backrest comes up to about just below my shoulders. And so it adds a bit of support for when I do lean back. It also makes the chair a tiny bit taller. So again, it's easier to see. It's easier to push under the desk and doesn't go all the way under. It gets stopped by the desk. But also, if I'm sitting up, I want to lean my head back, I've got something, and it's made to go into the back of your neck, so it's supported. I thought, I might as well get. If I'm going to get it, I might as well get everything.

[00:06:01.12] - Gordon
Get a nice one. Yeah, very good. We do that between us, don't we? When we decide we want to do something, we normally research it and then try and get the best that we can afford, basically. That's the way that it works for me. And you seem to have taken that over from me as well.

[00:06:20.09] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:06:21.02] - Gordon
Right. Anything else you want to say about your chair?

[00:06:23.14] - Taylor
I don't think so. I mean, if you ever have a chance to try somebody else's, or you come across them in a store or or at a friend's, give them a try and maybe keep an eye out on Facebook marketplace. There are people that basically resell them on there, so they're not really discounted. But yeah, there are some good-

[00:06:44.01] - Gordon
So give us the name again.

[00:06:45.08] - Taylor
So it's the Herman Miller Aeron. They have a classic and a remastered version. The remastered is slightly newer, slightly different fabric, but they're both good.

[00:06:54.14] - Gordon
Very good. So one of the things I did last week was pay my tax bill. It was 31st of January was the deadline for submitting your self-assessment and also for paying the tax that you owe. So, I did all that. I got it in in plenty of time and knew how much I had to pay. I've got a tax account, so it's just a matter of taking it out of that. Something I want to talk about, not today, but I'm going to come back to because I need to research it more, is MTD or making tax digital. That will affect all self-employed people and people who own property. That sort of income as well will be affected. That's something for another week. And this week my topic is keeping track of your power usage. Now, I'm one of these people who have a digital meter in my house which automatically sends my readings through to my fuel company. I think I'm right in saying that that is a requirement now for all users of fuel so that they can get one from their supplier for free. The one I've got is not from the company that I use, but it's a SMETS2.

[00:08:26.05] - Gordon
If you are getting one, SMETS2 is the most recent, I believe. I did have a SMETS1, and that's not as easy to transfer to other companies. So the idea is that you have a SMETS2 compatible device, and that will then work if you change supplier to another supplier, it will still work with your data, and they won't have to then supply you with a new unit, and then you have to get rid of the one you've got. Because that's just a waste of technology and plastic and all the components that go towards making these devices. So, I've got one of those already, and it works fine. It doesn't give me much data. It gives me enough. It tells me how much fuel I'm using in electricity and gas, so it separates them out at this moment in time. And it also tells me how much I've used that day, and it gives me kilowatt-hours as well. So very basic. However, I'm using Home Assistant, as you may know if you already listen to our podcast and have heard us talk about it before, and I can't get any of that data into Home Assistant easily.

[00:09:41.25] - Gordon
Now, there is a connector to my fuel supplier, but that only gives me the total kilowatt-hours and the cost per day, once a day for electricity, and the same for gas. So that's all very well. It's great for keeping a track of what my fuel bill is likely to be, but it doesn't really help me in figuring out what's going on in the house at any moment in time. Unless of course, I'm looking at it at that moment in time and I can see it's abnormally high and I can go, "Right, what's causing that?" Go and try and figure out what's going on. But I actually physically have to look at the device to be able to see that. So what I've done is I've signed up to an app called Bright, which is a free app and will connect with your account. So you basically tell it who you're with and your account number and it'll bring some data down, but again, only what the supplier gives you. They also sell a device called a Glow Display/CAD. I don't know what the CAD stands for, which I bought beginning of this week and it cost me about £75.

[00:11:07.20] - Gordon
What it does is it effectively is used in addition to your meter display, which sends the data to the fuel supplier. So you can't get rid of that. But it connects to that and it collects data. It collects your electricity every 10 seconds. So you're reading how much fuel you're using every 10 seconds and your gas every 30 minutes. And it works with MQTT. So you can basically instal it to Home Assistant, and it will collect this data ongoing. And then once you've got that data in Home Assistant, well, you can do all sorts of things. You can run automations that will have a look and just check how much fuel you're using. And if you go over a threshold that you specify, it will then alert you immediately if you want it to do so using push notification or a persistent notification in the app, whatever you've set up. And that way you can see when your power usage is going up over and above what you normally use, and you can figure out what's causing that immediately rather than waiting and then seeing your bill and seeing a huge spike on that day and going, "woah, what was that?"

[00:12:35.14] - Gordon
And not being able to do anything about it at that point. So you're basically saving yourself money by figuring out abnomalies, that's the right word, I think, as it happens. But you can also trigger other automations. So for example, my washing machine and my tumble dryer tell me how much power they're using when they're on. And you can stick that into Home Assistant, and it will then break down the usage so you can see what percentage of the power that was used that day is being used by your two devices. Unfortunately, they're the only two devices I have that give me power usage, which is a real shame because I would have really liked to have seen that data from other devices as well. I'm going to have to look at Tado. I don't believe that my radiators give me the amount of... Actually, it makes sense that it doesn't. But it is connected to this. Sorry, I'm thinking as I'm talking. It is connected to my boiler, so there is a possibility it could pick up how much gas is being used at that time, but that's the same as all the gas you're using, so that's no use to anyone.

[00:14:00.23] - Gordon
Right, okay, that's out of the way. Tado doesn't tell me, and even if it did, it wouldn't be any use. But I believe you can get electric sockets that you can then plug devices into, and that will then monitor how much power is going through that socket. So you can then see how much power a device is using. So if, for example, you get a new device and you want to see how power efficient it is, you can plug it into one of these devices for a week or two and get a baseline for how much power that's using. And then there might be various devices, like my 3D printers, for example, that I want to keep an ongoing usage count of. So it can tell me how much power it's using, and you can compare it against what device manufacturers tell you your devices are using. Then it gives you your own due diligence, if you like, on how much power it's actually using. I'm going to have to look into that because I haven't looked at that before, but I think you can get those devices. Do you know anything about those at all? Have you looked into this?

[00:15:18.13] - Taylor
Yeah, so you can get power strips, you can get plugs, that basically, yeah, tell you the power that is being drawn from it.

[00:15:24.27] - Gordon
Yeah, a plug strip is good, but you need to then know what's plugged into it to know what your...

[00:15:32.11] - Gordon
Yes, but you still need to know what's plugged into it. If you're using it and unplugging stuff and plugging different things in, that's not really going to help you much because-

[00:15:40.20] - Taylor
Yeah, if you're changing it regularly, then yeah.

[00:15:43.26] - Gordon
Yeah. Okay, so a power strip that has... Yeah, okay. I've got devices up in the storage room now which has things that are plugged in, and I'm not taking them out. So maybe that would be a really good use for a power strip that reports on the data being used, on the power being used. But anyway, the whole point of this is that I want to keep a better track of my fuel because costs are going up, and I need to know what is using the most amount of power and set up some automations to let me know and see if I can take the power and reduce it somehow. It's also a really good way of looking at the power cost because I get the standing rate and my kilowatt hour rate that comes down from my fuel company.

[00:16:41.13] - Gordon
I know what that is within this Glow device. And so as and when it changes, because either I've moved to a different fuel tier or I've moved to a different fuel supplier, I can then compare it with past data to see how much I'm saving because it's such a difficult thing to figure out when you've got a day rate, a standing rate, which is the same every day, no matter whether you use fuel or not, and then also the fuel that you're using. So it's really difficult to compare them. But if you've got all that data, you can then export it and do sums and spreadsheets and things with the data to give you an idea of what a standing charge and a fuel rate difference will give you and how much saving it will give you, if any. Because that's one of the biggest things when you move to a new tier or a new fuel supplier is, is it actually going to be saving money because there's so many different things that are involved. It's so difficult to figure out. But yeah, I might come back to this once I've looked at it more. Home Assistant has its own energy dashboard, which is very good, but is also quite limiting because it only checks once an hour, for example, for my fuel.

[00:18:10.14] - Gordon
So electricity, it will report once an hour to tell me what fuel is being used. And so I've set up separate graphs which will tell me every 10 seconds or every half an hour with fuel, which is much more useful to me. But I might circle back to this once I've added on some more devices to monitor my power. The other thing I was going to say about the energy dashboard is it will give you one of these, and I have no idea what it's called. If I remember when I'm doing the show notes, I'll put a note in the show notes as to what it is, but it's a really good graph that shows you your total power on the left. And then as it goes across, it splits it out into, for example, electricity will be the top half and gas is the bottom half. And then the electricity will be split out into laundry. And then the laundry will be split out into washing machine and tumble dryer. And then power strip and... So you can see the percentage of... It's like an expanded pie graph, if you like, but it's giving you a lot more detail because it shows you what the income to the outcome is, the incoming to the outgoing, which is much more useful.

[00:19:34.07] - Gordon
Yeah, that's pretty much it. Anything else you want to say on that?

[00:19:37.08] - Taylor
I don't think so.

[00:19:38.05] - Gordon
Okay, that's everything. That was quite a lot of information there, but it's all information that I've learned recently, and It's important for me to get this down onto this podcast so I can come back to it, and it's going to be in a transcript so I can look back and see where it was at the time and see my thinking behind it and see in the future if my thinking changes or if I come back to it and use this data for different things. Anyway, that's everything from me.

[00:20:06.23] - Taylor
And me as well.

[00:20:07.19] - Gordon
Thank you so much for joining us. As always, if you would like to watch this on YouTube, then please like share and subscribe. Leave comments for us as well.

[00:20:17.22] - Taylor
You can also go to our website thisweekwith.co.uk to find all of our past episodes.

[00:20:22.02] - Gordon
And if you would prefer to listen to us instead of watching us, we're on all the major podcast platforms and also on your smart speaker. Just do a search for "This Week With Taylor and Gordon." That last bit is really important because there's other "This Week Withs." So make sure you say the full thing into your smart speaker and do a search on your podcast platforms for the full title. We'll be back with you next Friday at 1pm. Until then, my name is Gordon, and I'm from Drayson Design.

[00:20:52.19] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.

[00:20:55.06] - Gordon
Goodbye.

[00:20:55.19] - Taylor
Bye.

This Week's Topics

Show Notes