Parents' £80 Elec. bill p.m, surely too much?Emersion heater?

buel

Hello lu lu, great to hear from you as always!!

yes you are right about my mum+dad, their heating is oil (£21 per week on average for the last 12 months) and their cooking is gas so £113 was definitely too much!

I suppose a victory of sorts has been made with the two facts:
1, That the pre-payment meter is now going to be replaced with a normal meter thus meaning they wont be stuck with the pre-payment meter's more expensive standing charge of 17.29p per day
2, Their useage for the last 14 days has come to 255Kwh whereas it used to be 475Kwh (using the fact that their 12 month useage was 12366Kwh divided by 52= 237Kwh multiplied by 2= 475Kwh)

You may be interested to find that my dad's fridge-freezer+small freezer have used a total of 8.8Kwh in 48 hours so, going on that, i suppose you could say that works out to 132Kwh per month. Bearing in mind that their monthly useage will be 510Kwh that would mean those two appliances use 25% of their monthly Kwh!!

Ps- i do realise that a reading after 48 hours isn't a fair indicator but im just going on what i have at the moment!

davidgmmafan

The timescale should be fine so long as that is typical usage. Clearly for something like a fridge freezer its safe to assume it normally uses about that amount.

Its good that the meter is getting changed, I'm not impressed on the £45 charge as I believe they should be changing it for free due to the vulnerability there. Still its a lot better than the £150 which was mentioned.

You can look at the possibility of an online tariff as these are usually the cheapest, but you'd have to think carefully before taking this step. You'd need to be sure your parents would be happy for you to view the bills online if they went for a paperless account. You don't want them to think you are over-stepping the maark and they may be more than satisfied with the savings so far.

Changing the meter will mean they will start getting some kind of discount for paying by direct debit so well done on that. I'm wondering what WE are all going to do when this draws to a close lol.

buel

Ha ha, im sure you will just start helping some other person on here who needs as much help as i did!! That is great advice about the online tarrif, thank you! Im sure they will be fine with that!! Well i now have the four day readings from my mum's fridge-freezer and my dad's fridge-freezer and small chest freezer, today the plug in monitor is going on the chest freezer that is stored in a lean-to with an open face to the weather! Can i please ask what my parents can fill their chest freezers with until they replace them, as they are about a quarter full at the moment.....

lu_lu_2

Hi Buel,

Don't fill the freezers with anything. Get them emptied & removed.

If your parents put anything in them even "temporarily" they will never be turned off!!!

Am sending you another PM

Lu lu

Joyful

You an either fill them with polystyrene blocks or but loaves of cheap bread until they use up the food.

buel

Hello all, sorry for the late posting, i've had quite a fair few days! Ok, excellent news- the new meter is now in-Yay!!! Also, my mum's will be buying her new fridge next week, it has an annual useage of 120kwh whereas the one she currently has uses 880kwh per year so those two things alone will have a positive result!!

davidgmmafan

Well done hope you enjoyed the journey

buel

Ha ha, the journey has been brilliant thank you but it isn't over until my dad's fridge-freezer and small chest freezer are replaced, that should take a few weeks and i may even buy them myself, plus there are one or two bulbs left to replace! This, with all your wonderful help and advice, has really helped save my parents lots of £s...my only regret is that it wasn't done ages ago....but better late than never i suppose!

buel

Hello again!
I was hoping i could ask for a wee bit of help?
Im looking for a new fridge for my mum, i have found quite a few on the Argos website that has wonderful options to filter out ones you need and do not need such as A/A+/A++ rated, price range etc but unfortunately i cant seem to locate any that have ice boxes in.
Now i have learned that the term 'Larder fridge' means no ice box but i have yet to find any with ice boxes in under the search of 'fridge'! The only other term usable is 'fridge freezer' which is not what i want as my mum is sticking with her chest freezer that uses 1kwh per day (as opposed the her fridge that uses 2.5kwh per day!)

Ps- The Which website offers plenty of fridges with and without ice boxes but, rather annoyingly, uses cost in pounds per year instead of kwh per year!

Andy_WSM

buel wrote: »

Ps- The Which website offers plenty of fridges with and without ice boxes but, rather annoyingly, uses cost in pounds per year instead of kwh per year!

Easy to convert back...

If a fridge is said to cost (for arguments sake) £30.00 a year, then assume a KW/h is 10p (because that's what it is for many people without discounts etc), so the fridge would use 300 Kw/h per year. (i.e. 300 * 0.10 = 30)

Need more help with that - give me a shout.