Cut Your Heating Bills

ZX Computing

Clive Smith

QUICKSOFT Clive Smith reviews some of the more unusual programs on the market. CUT YOUR HEATING BILLS Brane Software Ever since the 'Save it' campaign, there have been many ideas on the market to help us reduce our heating bills. Well, it's finally come to your computer via G Timms of Brane Software. This tape is ideal if you are a heating engineer or you are just about to install central heating into your house. Once loaded, the computer will ask you for a lot of details about your house; size of room, thickness of walls, type of floor covering, whether your house is draughty or not and so on. Once you have all these details you then find out the price and type of fuel you intend to use; electricity, coal, gas, wood, etc and feed this into your computer. With all these facts and figures it will then work out your running cost for the winter. The beauty of this program is, if you were thinking of putting loft insulation into your house, you can work out the advantages in sterling without laying out a lot of money. Nothing in this program has been left to guesswork or chance; as long as you take the time and trouble to feed all the information in correctly (and there's a lot of it) you will find this tape a useful tool. To give you some idea, it has a list of 38 different building materials your house could be made of! Cut Your Heating Bills comes supplied with a comprehensive guide which tells you exactly what the program is capable of and the benefits you can gain. Brane Software is at [redacted].

Your Spectrum

COOLING THE COSTS Is your home so cold during the winter that you don't just suffer with frozen pipes and frost on the inside of your windows, but you actually have to defrost the dog in the mornings? Yes? Then maybe you'd be interested in a program from Brane Software that's snappily entitled Cut Your Heating Bills. It can calculate savings from double glazing, cavity wall insulation, wall, floor and roof insulation, and change of fuel, heater, ventilation or thermostat setting. It can also compare true costs of different fuels and you can enter any combination of different insulation materials; results can be saved on tape or just printed out. The program runs on the 48K Spectrum and is available through mail order and costs £7.95 from Brane Software. Phone them on [redacted].