Avoid using GAS and ELECTRIC !

hesmy

Regarding kettles,they don't use electric if just plugged in,but turn off at the plug anyway as I have seen two where the switch failed and turned itself on in an empty kettle.Both times someone was there,but imagine in an empty house or if you're in bed.......!(I am an electrician)

MIRRY_2

We are going to turn off all the raidiators except for the living room one,
keep door closed in the evening and snuggle under blankets.

I am hoping its cheaper to heat just one raidiator ?

Punkygoth

This is the fisrt time i have used the forum, so I hope I am doing it right!
We have a very old Immersion Water heater that eats electricity and does not keep the water hot for long, despite being insulated. We are stuck with it as we live in a rented flat, and the landlord has no plans to get rid of it. Any ideas to make it less electricity hungry would be helpful! This is our only way of getting hot water.

foreverskint

Punkygoth wrote:

This is the fisrt time i have used the forum, so I hope I am doing it right!
We have a very old Immersion Water heater that eats electricity and does not keep the water hot for long, despite being insulated. We are stuck with it as we live in a rented flat, and the landlord has no plans to get rid of it. Any ideas to make it less electricity hungry would be helpful! This is our only way of getting hot water.

Do you have economy seven?
When do you use the hot water and what for.

We have a leccie eating monster tank, and just have it on for an hour a day, for a bath.

I have a dishwasher, and if I need hot water for cleaning, I boil up a kettle.

Punkygoth

foreverskint wrote:

Do you have economy seven?
When do you use the hot water and what for.

We have a leccie eating monster tank, and just have it on for an hour a day, for a bath.

I have a dishwasher, and if I need hot water for cleaning, I boil up a kettle.

Hi, no we don't have economy seven. We use it for showers and washing up, so it is on first thing in the morning and in the evening. We don't have a dishwasher

Penny-Wise_4

Our gas & electricity bills haven’t been that big – last quarter gas £12, electricity £79 – we’re actually in credit with them too, which is nice :cool: . We managed to get on Powergen’s fixed rate at the beginning of this year just after BG upped its rates, but before Powergen upped theirs .

We don’t want to be faced with a big heating bill this winter though & really need to insulate our house as it’s cold & draughty downstairs all winter.

We have the sort of heating that heats the radiators and hot water tank & won't do them independently :mad: . I wonder if it would still be cheaper to keep the heating on all the time? I guess we could take readings & do it for a couple of weeks on constantly & a couple of weeks on and off and see which used more gas.

I think this would only really work out cheaper if your house was draught proofed & insulated properly – in our house the heat would just keep escaping. We already have loft insulation (we may insulate the loft hatch though - good tip). We have some sealant & corking left over from decorating jobs that we can use to plug any bigger gaps around the windows & external doors.

We went to Wickes yesterday & bought:

A letterbox brush (from memory the price was about £3.60 :money: - pretty cheap I thought compared to some posted above (£9)),

Draught proofing tape – the foamy stuff to put around windows and doors (10m about £3),

Some polythene to staple under the floorboards downstairs to stop the draughts (about £5) - I think this will be the most effective way of keeping the heat in, our house is a small mid-terraced two up-two down but it has been made open-plan downstairs - all the downstairs heat tends to go upstairs & the thermostat is in the living room so our bedroom gets boiling & the living room is freezing –when its really cold & windy you can feel the freezing draught come through the floor, even with carpet & underlay. Hopefully the polythene under the floor downstairs will help stop that

Secondary glazing film (2 packs about £12)

TOTAL (from memory) £23.60

We want to spend this weekend draught proofing in good time for colder weather – hopefully it will mean we can keep the heating off for longer .

Is there anything else we could be doing? I want to stick foil behind our two radiators on outside walls – OH says it’s not possible to do it properly unless you take the rads off first – but you must be able to poke it down surely? Anyone got any tips?

How about cutting a large piece of corrugated cardboard to the right size, she wonders - answering her own question, sticking foil to it them poking it behind & squirting some glue down? OH says this would be too thick & block the air flow & stop the radiator working properly “they don’t just ‘radiate’ – they’re ‘convectors’” - apparently . (Can you tell which of us is practically minded and which is the academic?). I think it wouldn’t be much thicker than anaglypter wallpaper & would even add a smidgeon of insulation too .

Chipps

If he thinks its too thick, how about using ordinary (ie not corrugated) cardboard & covering it?

foreverskint

Punkygoth wrote:

Hi, no we don't have economy seven. We use it for showers and washing up, so it is on first thing in the morning and in the evening. We don't have a dishwasher[/quote

The only thing I can think to do is to try and shower at the same time;) I mean both of you in the evening, and wash up just once in the evening, whilst there's still some hot water in the tank, or boil kettle for washing up smaller lots.

That way you should only need to put the tank on once a day.

Punkygoth

foreverskint wrote:

Punkygoth wrote:

Hi, no we don't have economy seven. We use it for showers and washing up, so it is on first thing in the morning and in the evening. We don't have a dishwasher[/quote

The only thing I can think to do is to try and shower at the same time;) I mean both of you in the evening, and wash up just once in the evening, whilst there's still some hot water in the tank, or boil kettle for washing up smaller lots.

That way you should only need to put the tank on once a day.

Thanks for that, I think, as you say that the only way is to use less water!

kittiwoz

hesmy wrote:

Regarding kettles,they don't use electric if just plugged in,but turn off at the plug anyway as I have seen two where the switch failed and turned itself on in an empty kettle.Both times someone was there,but imagine in an empty house or if you're in bed.......!(I am an electrician)

Unless it was a cheap kettle with counterfeit controls the boil-dry protection would switch the kettle off (and probably prevent it being switched on again until it had been removed from the base, i.e. to fill it, and replaced) and if that failed then the fail-safe thermal fuse would stop it from overheating.