Is Old style really money saving?

Addiscomber

Cooking for a family of four for a week by electricity is estimated at 25-30 units a week. At 10p a unit that would be around £3 per week, £156 for a year. So even if you doubled that you would be looking at £26 pcm. Something else is going on with the OP's electricity bills.

On the subject of using an oven to the full, the being hotter at the top than the bottom apparently applies only to gas ovens, which have the burner at the bottom. Electric ovens have elements at the sides which makes the heat more evenly distributed. Fan ovens are usually run at least 10C cooler because they blow the warmed air around. It is still logical to cook as much as you can in the oven at one time, but they need to be things that require similar temperatures. I have always wondered though how much you actually save for anything like a pie, which needs to be reheated in the oven, rather than in a saucepan or microwave. Clearly you save money cooking and freezing things like cakes or flans which need no reheating.

On the figures in my first paragraph, whilst there are clearly some savings to be made by the way one cooks, they are but a small part of the bigger picture. Space and water heating and clothes washing and drying are candidates for much bigger savings by changing the way they are done.

livinginhope

Thanks again for the replies,don't worry Queenie grans's bones were not made into a stew LOL (sorry got no smilies?)
Well after a lot of detective work from DH and the rest of the family,I think we may have found the answer to the mystery!! yeahh!!
We think it's the SHOWER???? Dh has been out checking the meter everytime something is switched on,nothing really made as much difference as the shower,I put both ovens on full blast,this made the meter speed up but not too much,even the tumble didn't do too much,but with the shower it went crazy.Spoke to a friend who is an electrician he says it could be faulty and to stop using it before I get an unintentional perm in the bath!!!!,he says that it could have a carbon build up from the house fire last year,the bathroom was the only room to suffer minor damage,(the rest of the house was gutted)it was redecorated but the electrics weren't re-done,the shower is very old and I have questioned its performance for a while.
So today we are off to buy a new mixer tap with shower attatchment for the bath,this will use the gas boiler for the shower,so will save the electric.
I am also off to get some more baking tins,I only have a few as most were destroyed,this way I will be able to put more in the oven at once.
I will phone Poweregen again,tell them our findings and hope we can come to another arrangement for the bills.
Thanks again for all the suggestions and thoughts,sorry to those who got alarmed at the thought of their bills rocketing,didn't want to alarm anyone.
LIH

newleaf

Well done for finding the culprit!

Addiscomber

I hope you have found the source of your problem.

I am afraid that I have a mental picture of your DH leaping about like something possessed every time he hears a plug going into a socket or the click of a switch :rotfl: :rotfl:

I'll get my coat ....

Anastacia

Good job you kept checking, you could have been frazzled.

We had a funny smell sometimes on our stairs like burning bones ( we thought it was the old lady who lived here before - she pops back periodically to turn on lights in the middle of the night & scare the poop out of us) and it wasnt until i was downstairs one day when dd2 was in the shower i saw it was the old fashioned fuse box at the bottom of the stairs smoking like crazy. Could have been frzzled at any moment i would think.

Scarey!

XX