So British Gas have a fantastic system called Hive which enables you to control your heating system from your phone (or the thermostat). Usually this costs £250 for the product including installation but if you are looking for a Hive discount code then we have one here.
Hive Discount Voucher – Black Friday Week 2018
If you thought last year’s deal was good then this year it has got even better. If you want to get the Hive heating and hot water system (including professional installation if required) – you can get the whole deal for £148.99 including installation or £108.99 without the installation included (i.e. you install it yourself or get someone to install it for you). Grab the discount price here.
Hive Discount Voucher – Black Friday Week 2017
This year sees the best price so far for getting the Hive system (including professional installation if required) – you can get the whole deal for £159.99 including installation or £119.99 without the installation included (i.e. you install it yourself or get someone to install it for you). Grab the discount price here.
Hive Discount 4 – Black Friday 2016
So there is another great discount on the Hive heating control system for Black Friday 2016 and this time you can get the heating and hot water system for only £124.99 – I think this may be the lowest price so far – but obviously this price will not last long – get the discount price here.
HIVE DISCOUNT 3 – March 2016
Currently you can get the Hive version 2 system for heating and hot water with installation for the discount price of £185.78 – click the image on the left for more info.
HIVE DISCOUNT 2
Currently (February 2016) Amazon have a discount on the full Hive heating system including installation – reducing the price of £250 (which is the current price on the British Gas site) to £203.58.
We do not know how long this Hive discount price will last for but it seems that there are occasional discounts being given for the Hive system on Amazon so click through on the link below to show the currently available price.
HIVE DISCOUNT 1
OK so this Hive discount code only applies for Black Friday – 27 November 2015. If we come across any other codes then we will add them here. Currently you can get a £70 discount on the Hive heating control system from British Gas and believe it or not it is being sold on Amazon for Black Friday.
Here is the link to the reduced price Hive system. Even with the discount it shows the full price below but click through on 27th November and you will get the discounted price of £179. If you click on the link after the discount period is passed it may not work or it may just come up with the standard price:
With Hive you can use an app on your smartphone to change your heating while you are out. You can also have different settings during the day so that you are in total control of your heating system. It also has a setting for automatic frost protection so that you can leave your heating on the lowest possible setting without the danger of burst pipes while you are away.
This Hive discount code offers a significant saving on the installation of the system and it could pay for itself in energy savings in a couple of years.
Well to start off with it is a question as to what you call the most healthy. Many people have different ideas of what they consider to be healthy, whether that be the items with the lowest number of calories, lowest amount of fat or indeed the carb content of food. In this article we look through the figures as provided by Burger King themselves (they are quite transparent as to the numbers that are contained in each item) and analyse the data from the different categories so that we can present it to you in a way you might find both interesting and surprising!
Please note that when quoting values, although Burger King quote their values to 1 decimal place, we have rounded their figures for ease of display. After all half a calorie is really neither here nor there with some of the numbers!
At the end of the article you can find a summary of which items tend to come out top in all categories – low calorie, low carb and low fat.
Calories
Beef, Chicken, Fish and Veggie Options Under 500 Calories
The hamburger is lowest in calories after the salads.
Firstly we will look at the main meal type options as classified above. In this case we have sifted through the data and come up with the options that contain less than 500 calories. In order of total calories from lowest to highest they are as follows:
As you would expect, the salads do well and the chicken dishes are lower in calories than the beef dishes. Also go smaller (e.g. Whopper Jr) and you will obviously eat less calories too!
The one that you might not expect is the Veggie Wrap coming in at 494 calories, nearly 150 more than the caesar chicken wrap.
Sides Dips and Extras Under 250 Calories
We have restricted the list of sides, dips and extras to show only those under 250 calories, as obviously these are extras! So on top of whatever else you have you need to remember to add this lot on…
Unfortunately a lot of restaurants are no longer serving the SATISFRIES as they were given the option to stop serving them by Burger King when the take up was not as much as they hoped. However, small fries at 222 are only an extra 7 calories.
Soft Drinks Under 125 Calories
Ok so we chose a cut-off of 125 calories for this section as this excluded around 50% of the drinks listed for sale. Most of the higher calorie items were different sizes (or larger servings) of Coca-Cola and Sprite and those under 125 calories are the following:
With regards to breakfast, the only item that is under 250 calories per serving is the Bacon Butty with Heinz Ketchup which comes in at 216 Kcal. Next best is 6 Mini pancakes and syrup which contain 269 calories – the rest of the breakfast options come in at over 300 calories (most of them a lot more) unless you count the add-ons like hash browns which contain 192 calories for a regular serving.
Desserts and Shakes – Calories
You would expect desserts to be heavily loaded with calories (although perhaps shakes less so) and for the most part you would be right but there are some options that appear to not actually be too bad. Top of the list coming in as the only item on the dessert menu at less than 100 calories is the Ice cream cone. Ice cream often contains less calories than people imagine – often because it contains less cream than you might imagine and more ice!
There are a couple of desserts hovering around the 130 level namely the strawberry sundae at 133 and the regular frozen lemonade at 138. You could also just sneak in a chocolate sundae at 153 calories but after that (apart from the large frozen lemonade) you are looking at over 200 calories and up to a whopping 612 for a large chocolate shake.
Carbs
Low Carbs
In recent years a low carb diet has become one of the more popular ways to eating healthily and perhaps losing some weight. Guidelines differ as to how many grams of carbohydrates are recommended for those on a low carb intake diet, and it is more a case of finding the level for you as each person is different. Certainly it is not recommended to eat less than 50g of carbohydrates a day though.
Again I have rounded out the carb numbers to the nearest gram for ease of reference.
Beef, Chicken, Fish and Veggie – Carbs
So for the best carb options I had to go with those containing under 40g as there was only one option under 30g as you can see below:
Ok so there are no breakfast items that are lower than 30g of carbs apart from the Hash Browns add-on which contain 22g for the regular size. Other than that the two items with the lowest carbs for breakfast, which are under 40g are the Sausage Butty with Heinz Ketchup containing 34g and the Sausage, Egg and Cheese Butty with Heinz Ketchup containing 37g.
Soft Drinks – Carbs
Any amount of diet coke has 0g of carbs so I won’t list all of the quantities, of the rest there are some that have less than 30g as follows: However, that would be quite a lot when added to a similar amount for a meal and extras so take note of what else you are having!
If you are looking to reduce your carb intake then you may wish to avoid the desserts and the shakes in particular! There is one reasonably good option which again is the ice Cream Cone. This only has 16g of carbohydrates. The next best are 3 that are over 30g and they are the Frozen Lemonade Regular (33g), the Strawberry Sundae (36g) and the Chocolate Sunday (37g).
Top of the list (again) is the large chocolate shake with a whopping 113g.
Low Fat
Low Fat Options
If you are looking for options that are low fat then we have analysed the data on fat content and found the following:
It’s reasonably predictable that the salad options would come out on top but the sweet chilli chicken wrap also comes out favourably.
Soft Drinks – Low Fat
Generally speaking soft drinks do not contain much fat and the only soft drink option that contains above 1g of fat is the milk at 4.3g.
You are never going to go wrong if you opt for water though!
Sides, Dips and Extras – Low Fat
For the dips you can expect very little fat in any of them, in fact the Ketchup, Sweet Chilli and BBQ dips have no fat. Adding bacon only adds 0.4g, so not a lot but adding cheese gives you an extra 6.5g which is significant for a small extra. So at 10g and under all you can get are fries at 10g and SATISFRIES if you can get hold of them at 8.4g.
Breakfast – Low Fat
So we have narrowed down the breakfast options to the ones that contain less than 15g of fat and those are as follows:
Bacon Butty with Heinz Ketchup – 6
6 Mini Pancakes and Syrup – 10
Egg and Cheese Butty with Heinz Ketchup – 12
Sausage Butty with Heinz Ketchup – 13
You could just tip over the 15g with 9 Pancakes and the Bacon, Egg and Cheese Butty but the rest are significantly more.
Desserts and Shakes – Low Fat
As the majority of the desserts and shakes come out at under 10g of fat each (apart from the muffins, brownie and toffee sponge which are streets ahead!), we have focused on those items that contain less than 5g of fat each.
This basically covers all of the smoothies – they are all at less than 2g of fat – and the frozen lemonade which has none. The ice cream cone also still fares pretty well at 3.4g.
Overall Summary of the Healthiest
So looking at the overall picture, regardless of whether you are counting calories, carbs or fat, there are a few items that are consistently near the top of the list for all of them. There is an obvious choice of going for a Grilled Chicken Salad with a bottle of water which is the best idea if you are going to Burger King maybe with friends and are not too fussed about having a burger.
However, if you are going to Burger King with something more in mind then you might be advised to stick to maybe either a sweet chilli chicken wrap or a hamburger. Obviously water for the drink but otherwise a regular diet coke (unless you are specifically watching carbs) and then the most common item at the top of the healthy list for desserts is the ice cream cone.
Adding regular fries will bump things up a bit but may be an essential part of the meal for you.
So a quick summary gives the following:
Totals for a sweet chilli chicken wrap, regular fries, water and an ice cream cone are:
So last year I bought a property that needed a lot of work doing on it. I did most of the work inside the house and a bit of work on the garden. One of the big problems of the garden was the fact that there were a lot of paving slabs out there and most of them were covered in algae.
I thought it would be very costly (and not really necessary) to replace all of the paving slabs with new ones so I decided to try and find a way to clean them up. Over a few weeks I tried different methods to try and get rid of the algae and general staining that the paving slabs had accumulated over the years.
Things I Tried
Scrubbing with a hard broom and patio cleaner did give some results but not as much as I wanted. It was also a lot of hard work!
I bought some liquid patio cleaner that you mix with water and used this with a stiff yard brush to try and get rid of the algae. Although this did help a bit and the paving slabs did get a bit cleaner they were still nowhere near where I wanted them to be. Added to this it was really hard work to scrub all of the paving slabs since I had so many!
The second thing that I tried was bleach. When I had searched for remedies for cleaning paving stones this was one thing that came up quite a lot. I was a bit hesitant as it did not seem very environmentally friendly to use bleach but I gave it a go, watered down, also with a stiff brush. Again I did get some limited results but still nothing major that I was happy with. Some people advised to use neat bleach but I didn’t really think that this would be a good thing to use in the garden, particularly as I had quite a lot to do.
The Best Thing to Clean Paving Slabs
So, as I was at a bit of a loss as to what to do next, my friend said that she would lend me her pressure washer. I had thought about using one but I wasn’t sure that I would get any better results that using the cleaners that were specially made for this job and a large amount of elbow grease!
Boy was I wrong. The moment I started cleaning with the pressure washer the slabs started to come up clean, almost like new! It took me about 5 minutes to clean each paving slab but the results were really incredible. It almost looks like I have replaced the patio.
Using the pressure washer brought the paving slabs almost back to new.
The pressure washer works off your water supply and a clicklock hose attachment. Ideally you will need an outside tap but if you can fix the attachment on a kitchen tap then you should be able to get this to work. Turn the water on once the hose is attached and then plug the washer on and turn it on. It will make quite a bit of noise while it is working. A pressure washer usually has a couple of settings as to how the water comes out, I chose the most concentrated jet to do my slabs as this seemed to give the best results.
However, one thing you need to be aware of is that if you have any lose mortar in between the slabs there is a danger of this getting blown out by the jetwash. Also, wear old clothes as you can get sprayed with wet earth if there is mud between the paving stones.
Anyway, check out the pictures and the video and you will see what an amazing transformation can be made by using a pressure washer to clean your paving slabs.
You can buy pressure washers in local hardware stores or else there are a lot of options available on Amazon – US and UK:
So last night/this morning was the much awaited ‘blood moon’ lunar eclipse where the moon essentially passed into the shadow of the Earth and turned a lovely red colour. This happened at about 3am in the UK and we can share with you some great photos that were taken in London by Tim Fleischman. (All photos are subject to copyright and should not be reproduced). The photos were taken with a Canon 5DSR with a Celestron NexStar SE4 computerised telescope.
The blood red moon was seen by many in the UK as the skies were clear in many areas.
Other parts of the world had different phenomena – in the US there was a total lunar eclipse but nothing much to see in Australia which just had a normal full moon.
Plenty of people waited up or got up in the night to see the lunar eclipse and there were lots of pictures posted on social media showing the view from around the UK and indeed the world.
This type of supermoon lunar eclipse last occurred in 1982 and isn’t due to happen again until 2033 so it is a reasonably rare phenomenon.
So, a little while back, I decided that I would look into this business of earning money from surveys that is touted by various websites as being a way of earning some money from home. I had always been a bit wary of the ‘Making money from Surveys’ thing but decided that I would just investigate it myself and see what it was all about.
When you google ‘making money from surveys’ you get a heck of a lot of results and there are a few key players. But also there are companies that get you signed up to quite a few different survey providers. It can all get rather confusing and even now I can’t remember which website I went to originally because they all seem to be linked in to one another!
Anyway, I signed up for a number of them which include Panelweb, Valued Opinions, Inbox Pounds, Global Test market and Opinion Outpost. There may even be more but those are the ones that appeared in my inbox most often. A lot of these companies invite you to other panels as well but I figure this is quite enough for now and I probably can’t even keep up with this lot!
How Does It Work?
So, pretty much every day, if not more than once a day I was getting an email from all of these companies inviting me to take part in a survey. In return for completing the survey I could get points or even in some cases actual money. Some of the sums are quite large (up to £8 so far) but these kinds of sums are not available by just filling in some questions but by actually taking out a trial subscription for something. Most of the emails that come through with this kind of offer I just delete.
The surveys that offer points for completion do enable you, once you have built up enough points, to exchange then for things like Amazon vouchers which would also be just as useful as money as I often spend money on Amazon anyway. But I was more inclined to try and complete the surveys that offered real money more often.
Every morning when I got up there were a bunch of surveys waiting in my inbox as they come in all times of the day and night. If you are going to do this then you really need to keep a good handle on your inbox so that your email does not get bogged down with surveys. Even with what seems to be a small number of companies that I signed up for I was already feeling that my email could get overwhelmed.
The best method of dealing with them seems to be to set aside some times in the day when you will go through the surveys that you have received and try and complete as many as possible.
Can You Really Earn Money From Surveys?
My Inbox was inundated with survey emails
Ok, so here is the rub, each survey you complete you have to go through some questions to see if you are actually eligible to complete the survey. In some cases I have found that these questions in themselves can take a good amount of time to complete and all you get in the end is ‘I’m sorry but you do not qualify’ so you have wasted your time. In fact, for the surveys that I have completed so far I would go as far as saying that I have been ineligible for around 80% of them!
For example I got a survey one morning asking if I had had a fungal nail infection in the last year! But first it asks personal details and information about which TV region you are in etc.
So I tried to complete at least a few surveys a day (a lot of them take about 20 minutes to complete) but after 10 days of doing this I had earned less than £2 due to being ineligible for most of them. Not exactly a great rate of return.
Perhaps I was not the right demographic for doing this and other people might have more success and be able to earn more money!
Is It a Scam?
Well this is the key question and I have to say that I think in a way it is. The reason I say this is the you can tell by the way some of the questions are phrased that the survey is not there to get your opinions about things but it is there to see if you are likely to be interested in a certain product. No doubt the product of the person who is conducting the survey. I will give you a couple of examples of this:
1. I took part in a survey which asked which charities you were most likely to give money to (this was just one of the many questions) – I think there were a list of only a few specific charities. I ticked the box for Great Ormond Street Children’s hospital. A few days later I got a phone call from their office asking if I wanted to give just 75p a week to the charity. So really this wasn’t a survey about opinions as it was made out to be, at least one factor of it was to try and get people to give money to charity.
2. I remember completing a survey where one of the questions was about pre-paid funeral plans. I must have ticked that this would be a good idea as I had a relative who died recently who had one and it made life so much easier for us. However, it’s not something I would do now but maybe in about 10 years time. Anyway, just this morning I got a call from a company asking if I would be interested in taking out a plan.
So, to me, the majority of the surveys are more than likely just companies trying to find people to flog stuff to. I’m a bit annoyed as I don’t generally give out my home phone number so I don’t want now to have a whole rush of cold calls coming in. Perhaps I just won’t answer the phone unless it is a number I recognise!
The other point that I think makes it a scam is the fact that you can fill in a whole lot of surveys without being eligible for any of the rewards, thus completely wasting your time.
If you are eligible for a survey then you can earn really small amounts – but then this is your decision. If you have spare time and it is the only way you might earn some money then you may just do it anyway.
