Bringing down my gas and leccy bill challenge (start August 2008)

airedaleterrier

Can I join in please. Currently paying £75 pm for elec ( including paying for Cavity wall insulation which wilb epaid for by Jan 09) and £60 gas. Not sure of daily units but will start reading them.

mardatha

I'm sure a plasma tv uses a lot... and I know they were talking about eco washes not being so good...somebody will come and give you better advice, hold on.

Andy_Hamilton

When buying products be aware not only of the "rating" but of how you will use them.
A large drum washer (mine is Dyson AAA rated) not only allows it to run quite cheap but also washes bigger loads than others.
With Fridge freezers be more aware;
An A+ effecient tall fridge freezer will run at 270KWH per year (£40.50) compared to an A rated american fridge freezer which will run at 572KWH per year (£85.80)
Do you really need the automatic dispenser of cold water or can you open the door and use a jug of water?

Over 5 years the costs work out as:
£270 etra at the start then £226.5 extra in leccy
Total extra = £496.5

airedaleterrier

Early in this list there is mention of throws to keep warm. I'm a great believer that the greater the wool content the warmer it will be. I find that a lot of the fleecy throws are 100% man made, and whilst comforting aren't any where near as warm as 100% wool. Learn to knit, and rescue pure wool from charity shops. There's lots out there and using two or three threads together soon knit up. Otherwise buy charity shop wool jumpers, and cut in to squares and re sew them together to make a warm balnket/throw.

Magentasue

myleta253 wrote: »

I have just started to do daily meter readings.
I can`t believe it, but in 3 hours we have used 3 units.
The only items on were 1. plasma tv
2. sky box
3. cooker for warming sausage rolls in oven and 2
rings for potatoes and baked beans
4. fridge /freezer
Since then I hoovered upstairs and down and put the dishwasher on and used another 1.5 units in half an hour.

I`m gutted and terrified.

On this site, people are saying they are only using about 5-10 units a day. My 4.5 units were in 3 and a half hours, and that was before my children were up and using their tvs, sky boxes and playstations. As a family we are getting very good at turning lights off/switching of plug sockets instead of leaving things on stand-by but it doesn`t seem enough.

Please help me.

As a start, could someone please explain to me how my washing machine-1 year old and I think it was an A rating-has an eco-wash setting but it washes on 60 degrees and takes 2 hours and 20 minutes but it has a daily wash at 40 degrees and only takes 30 minutes. Can a longer/hotter wash really be more economical? The same applies to my dishwasher-longer eco-wash compared to daily longer wash.

Thank you to anyone who can help.

For my machine, the lower the temp, the lower the cost.

Plasma TVs are enrgy guzzlers. We only have TV on in the evening, usually after 8pm. Kids will put it on anytime. We have two sets - main one and kids' one for games etc. I can't see why anyone needs it on during the day but my kids don't see it that way.

I think you're going to have to limit the TV - turning off lights will make little difference if you're using high-energy appliances like plasma TVs.

dutch777

We have managed to get our elec down to an average of 7.5 units per 24hrs.

Previously we were averaging between 11 and 14 units a day. We have 2 children 3 tvs 2 computers and lots of game consoles and more electrical gadgets than you could imagine.

We are on economy 7 but have gas central heating below is what we have done to drop our elec bill.

Fridge Freezer: Is now cleaned at the rear hovered, the freezer is defrosted every 3 months and kept full with cheap lollies lol. The fridge part now has a thermometer in it and is set to stay between 37-40c the food in the fridge is set out to allow air to circulate.

TV,s V+ Boxes are switched off at the wall when not being used DVD players etc are never plugged in unless they are being used.

Computers: Monitors in standby after 10mins of idle system standby after 15mins. Switched off at wall when not being used.

All lights in the house are now energy bulbs and are switched off when leaving the room.

When economy 7 kicks in during the night we do 2 full loads of washing and 1 - 2 loads with the tumble dryer, the laptop DS,s Mobile phones House digital phones and rechargeable batteries are put on 1 extension that runs off a timer so charges them all through the economy 7 time at night.

We avoid using the oven as this seems to just scoff electricity lol

So on average we are using 5 day units and 3 night units hope some of the above helps others.

Magentasue

Yes, going back to Myleta's post - turning the oven on to warm sausage rolls is a tad wasteful. Different if you're baking several batches!

Anything that produces heat is using a lot of energy so the oven should be full when you're using it.

Lily-Lu

I've been keeping track of daily usage of electric (can't understand how to convert the gas meter reading to kwh, so can't track that:o) for a few days now. I was horrified that we'd used 12kwh of electric in about 28hrs, as there's only 2 of us here at he moment. Only using a pertable TV, keeping lights off when not in rooms, using cooker very little etc.
So, at a fixed rate of around 15p/kwh you can imagine I was panicking a tad:eek:

Anyhow, I thought about this nightmare of an undercounter fridge that we have. It's one with an ice box, and due to the door of the ice box breaking off, it's frosting up thick and fast. So, I defrosted it and tracked a further 28hrs of usage - low and behold we used 8kwh instead of 12:T So, I'm really going to have to keep on top of the defrosting until the new fridge arrives.

Anyway, I'm definitely up for a challenge of keeping usage as low a possible. I've even started to switch the alarm clock off at the socket each morning.

Something else I'm thinking of doing is taping over the button that pops out for the light to come on inside the fridge when you open it. Can't see why I really need it if I have the light on in the kitchen, anyway. That's assuming that button does nothing more than triggering the light, and it's not connected in any way to the fridge temp? Can anyone confirm this please?

myleta253

I know...My name`s Myleta and I`m a wasteful so-and-so.

As I said this is the first time we`ve actually looked at what our meter is doing. We pay 90 pounds a month for both gas and electric-capped thanks to Martin-and we can just about manage that. But of course the actual price of fuel has gone up so it was just an experiment to see how we were doing....and the answer is not great.

We took the reading at 10am and now it`s nearly 6pm and we`ve used 7 units.

We know things have got to change. Thank you for starting this post-without it I would never have looked at our meter. We have decided to do nothing today and see what the reading is tomorrow at 10am. Then we can look back over the last 24 hours and see where the most electric is being used....yes my shameful plasma and my square-eyed children. We have discussed a few money/electric saving stratagies since this morning, and tomorrow I intend to turn into Sargent Major Myleta and getting our estimated 18 units used today well, well, down.

Thanks for your help.

SuiDreams

Lily-Lu wrote: »

I've even started to switch the alarm clock off at the socket each morning.

I don't have alarm clock I use my mobile as it never gets switched off and try and charge it up at work as much as possile.