Why someone I know had a large electricity bill

st999

For the past couple of years a friend had started to pay attention to his electricity bills because of the increase in his direct debits. He never did before he just paid.

We got talking about our electricity usage and he was always using about 1500 kWh electricity per year more than me and yet our houses are similar.

So he got a plug in monitor and noted what everything was using.

He then started taking twice daily meter readings and discovered some nights he was using 6 - 8 kWh at night whereas I was using 1 kWh

Nothing seemed to be using more than it should. His house had old wiring with fuses, this will become important so he became convinced that is what was wrong so rewired his house.

Anyway to cut a long story short he is a keen fisherman and what he was doing most nights was putting an earth rod into the ground to collect worms :eek:and because it was only one wire in the plug he thought it would not use very much electricity. How he never electrocuted himself I will never know.

And he never connected this with the high usage during the night. He never told me or anyone else what he was doing in case he got into trouble from someone.

Of course this would not work after he rewired his house and replaced the fuses with circuit breakers.

And he never connected this with the high usage during the night.

He has a wormery now.

Stan

penrhyn

Presumably his consumption increased dramatically after a storm.
BTW circuit breakers would not trip if you were stupid enough to stick a live cable into the ground, unless you exceeded the rating. What you are thinking about is a residual current device.

Ken68

Thats a new one Stan. http://www.freepatentsonline.com/3973354.html

Cardew

I am not sure if this is intended to be a joke or not!

6kWh to 8 kWh use by sticking an earth spike in the ground overnight?

You cannot destroy energy, where to you think the heat went?

penrhyn

Well you know that hot spring in the back garden:rotfl:

st999

where to you think the heat went

Why do you think there were a lot of worms for him to pick up when he went fishing?

What you are thinking about is a residual current device

whatever, but it tripped the first time he tried it after the rewire.

Stan

jenny2009

http://www.bizbag.com/Kitchen%20Science/electricity.htm
this is a well proven method of catching worms.

My father did it 50 years ago

Jenny