absolute rock bottom!

dancingfairy

hmmm. Not sure why you have such large bills. But just wanted to send you some positive vibes.
df

bargainbetty

Just a thought, but does your son leave his console, laptop etc on standby,or turn them off completely? I noticed a jump in my bills when my flatmate hooked up all his toys, and it was mostly to do with standby thingies.

If you need to have some noise (I understand what you mean) have you tried windchimes or something similar? Natural resources etc

moo_cow

hi, just checked th gadget thingy and it's telling me I am currently using just under 600 watts or whatever it is. I have the pc on, and the freezer. the clocks are on, on the microwave, dvd player, son's stereo. digibox is on standby. oh, and the fridge is on. don't keep the cooker switched on because i have a dog that likes to investigate and see if i've left anything nice on the top of it. when he's stretched up to have a look he has knocked knobs on so I keep it switched off.
does this seem right?

moo_cow

son does have a habit of sometimes leaving his things on standby so i check as soon as he's out the door and switch them off. teenagers!

methusala_2

the computer should be turned off completely when not in use as its too easy to forget the monitor which goes into standby and trickles usage, The dimmer is NOT saving you anything, all the dimmer does is run a tiny what can best be described as electric single bar fire in the switch and allows the rest to light the bulb less, cheaper option is to insert a lower wattage bulb and forget the dimmer.
I have a device that plugs into a socket, then the appliance is plugged in to that and it displays an accumalative total of mins the appliance is on and how much electricity it has used in total. Very useful for checking out freezer consumption over a 24 hour period as with any other appliance. Digibox uses about 14w in standby so in 24 hours thats 336w, ok not a fortune but 24/7/365 it mounts up and multiply that figure as a guideline for any device on standby and you start to see real wastage.

methusala_2

600 watts.......eek i'd start running around. If your using the dvd player whos watching it ? your on the computer, cant be your son he's palying music,your computer is probably using 170w or close to it, the freezer if its actually ON at the moment should be using about 80watts max, so that 170+80 = 250 wheres the other 350 going, look around

moo_cow

there's nothing left on. have a sneaky suspicion it's the freezer. going to ask hubby to turn it off for a minute and see if it makes a difference. will let you know.

moo_cow

just turned freezer off and it plummeted to 346. hmm!

bargainbetty

Ah, methinks a defrost might be called for......

methusala_2

ouch
250 is seriously defective.

now you would really need the device i mentioned to plug the freezer in to and check how long its actually running for ie (drawing electricity) in a 24 hour period, then decide, does it have a fault or is it in dire need of space filling and defrosting. I have to say if I had a freezer sucking 250+ watts I'd be looking to replace it. What size is it ?? If you can give me the size i could tell you what you should expect it to be drawing.