The 9 year plan...hold onto your hats and here we go!

Karmacat

Thats tres impressive, EH. That happened to me with the water - I was paying £44 a month :eek: and when I went on a meter they dropped it immediately to £15 - its now £10 :j I mean, just think of it - £35 a month saved with no effort! Well, I've always been careful, as a bit of a Green, and now I'm ultra careful, but still.... I'm chuffed with that.

EssexHebridean

[STRIKE]Get some ham out of the freezer to add to toasties for tea tonight[/STRIKE]
[STRIKE]Ring virgin to take off Sky Sports package[/STRIKE]
[STRIKE]Price check pet shop, jollyes, pets at home and The range for cat food.[/STRIKE]
Start making Christmas cards with bits I’ve got in.
Backup laptop
[STRIKE]Set up outlook reminder for “TV licence” months…..[/STRIKE]
Do Christmas present audit to see what we still need to buy – do a list for our days out.
Do my Christmas list
Tyre pressures – both cars.
Jet wash my car (too cold to wash by hand now)
Portion up and freeze bacon.
Do breakdown cover for my car to start 29/11 but reduce mileage to 20k per year.
[STRIKE]Morrisons – buy stamps with 5% savings and see what else is on offer. Do any shopping that will be cheaper there than tesco – call in at Tesco on way back for the balance.[/STRIKE] No stamps though - the store weren't doing the 5% off!
Do meal plan for next few weeks taking account of what we have in.
[STRIKE]Join BB for free bingo money and see how I get on.[/STRIKE][/QUOTE]

Making some progress...still more to get through mind you. :rolleyes:

Katy83

That's incredible on the low gas and electric bills EH! I'm very impressed. Not impressed enough to switch the heating off though! In my defence we don't have it on in the mornings or during the day. When we lived in the flat is was so cold, my direct debits were £110/month for a 1 bedroom flat :eek:. We've put in a lot of insulation underneath it though so hopefully the tenants won't be finding it as expensive.

KC - in Scotland the water bills are in with the council tax. We are still really careful though...should ask them for a discount! :rotfl:

taxi73

That'splenty of progress as it's a long list!!!
Good luck with the bingo.

Lemon_Tree

we have no gas so our eleccy bill just keeps going up and up, and we still dont' have the heating on and the hot water is only turned on once or twice a week. We also turn off everything possible but it just doesn't seem to help. Guess is also doesn't help that there's a damp problem which just makes everything feel even colder.

EssexHebridean

Yes, this place has a tendancy to be damp as well LT - horrible isn't it. We've got a dehumidifier that at this time of year we run pretty much 24 hours a day - the amount of moisture it takes out is crazy! I'm trying to think what things I noticed really made a difference when I was monitoring the electric too - are you on an economy 7 tariff? We have timeswitches on the dishwasher, only ever have the immersion on overnight, and use the time delay on the washing machine to do as much as possible on the night rate, and use candles to boost light in the evening (and heat!) and just a single table lamp. We're averaging about 7 daytime units and 7.5 nighttime units per day at the moment although the night ones will rocket up when the heating goes on. I know tumble dryers chew through units, people reckon dishwashers do too although ours is pretty cheap to run. Might be worth borrowing one of those energy meters from somewhere - the sort that you can put individual appliances on?

EssexHebridean

[STRIKE]Get some ham out of the freezer to add to toasties for tea tonight[/STRIKE]
[STRIKE]Ring virgin to take off Sky Sports package[/STRIKE]
[STRIKE]Price check pet shop, jollyes, pets at home and The range for cat food.[/STRIKE]
Start making Christmas cards with bits I’ve got in.
Backup laptop Can't do this - the external HD won't connect to the laptop for some reason - am wondering if this might be a "vista issue" :mad:
[STRIKE]Set up outlook reminder for “TV licence” months…..[/STRIKE]
Do Christmas present audit to see what we still need to buy – do a list for our days out.
Do my Christmas list
Tyre pressures – both cars.
Jet wash my car (too cold to wash by hand now)
Portion up and freeze bacon.
Do breakdown cover for my car to start 29/11 but reduce mileage to 20k per year.
[STRIKE]Morrisons – buy stamps with 5% savings and see what else is on offer. Do any shopping that will be cheaper there than tesco – call in at Tesco on way back for the balance.[/STRIKE] No stamps though - the store weren't doing the 5% off!
[STRIKE]Do meal plan for next few weeks taking account of what we have in.[/STRIKE]
[STRIKE]Join BB for free bingo money and see how I get on.[/STRIKE]

Lemon_Tree

hi EH,
yes we're on economy 7 so i time as much as possible to run during that time, the dehumidifier, the washer, the dishwasher, charging mobiles/cameras.
we turn everything of at the switch whenever we can. And i only use the tumbler on pain of death.
Our new washing line in the hallway, with dehumidifier seems to have worked really well overnight. I've got a load outside and another one just finishing which can go outside to get a little drier before the rain appears as forecasted.
Just waiting for the 'chat' with our upstairs neighbour about the gutters etc and then probably off to b&q to find out how to put a storm porchy thing above our patio doors to try and stop the water pouring in.

Jo_R_2

You know these timeswitches you've mentioned... How do they work exactly?

We have economy 7 and I find I hardly get chance to use anything at night. Eon did offer to put us on a standard tarriff but held off for the mo to see if can do anything about it.

I mean for example - if I put a timeswitch on the washing machine, would I switch it on at the wall AND put the 'on' switch on the machine itself? I just can't see it in my head how they work (the timeswitches that is!:D)

Lemon_Tree

my first washer i used to plug into a time which then plugs into the socket, you set the times that the power reaches the machine and if you've set it up to go it will turn itself on etc. You can also override the timer plug though if you want to do stuff during the day. My new machine had a built in timer which works the same way. I use the socket timer things for the everything else i want to run over night though. I did find with my dishwasher and the old washing machine that i had to remove the plugs, and put the cable up through the work surface so that i could plug them in where i could access the socket to override the timer.