Energy saving to cut bills

Carolyntia

WelshWoofer wrote: »

Thanks for thining of me - I phoned the council last week for a form to fill in - as predicted it hasn't arrived yet!

Not a problem - have you popped along to the Preparing for Winter thread yet? There's some great ideas there for keeping your house warm

hermum

gunsandbanjos wrote: »

Why is my electricity so freaking expensive!? I pay over £100 pcm for a tiny 2 bed flat:eek: We have NO central heating, only 1 little oil filled radiator which is on Oct-Feb/March as our flat is super hot. No gas so elec is only fuel. I dont understand:(

Do you boil more water in the kettle than you need?

zippychick

as this has dropped down the Old Style board, ive moved this to the gas and electricity board as you may get help and suggestions over here as well

Zip

chris1973

Here is what I did to reduce my Electricity bill

1) Replaced all light bulbs with Energy Saving ones. 16W in places where high brightness is needed, 11W on the landing and porch, and 7W & 9W in areas of low light requirement - bathroom, bedrooms etc

2) Replaced the outside floodlight tube with a 24W Energy saving one. 500W to 24W in one purchase simply by changing over the lamp. Its nowhere near as bright as a 500W halogen tube, but 500W was overkill and annoying the neighbours anyway and the 24W version is instant and it serves the purpose to go to the bin at the end of the garden and also light over the windows for security etc. What more do you need?.

3) Cut down on the X-Box usage, and started reading more or just watching TV. The X-Box uses close to 200W which is 1 KW/H for every 5 hours of use. If you have kids who sit in front of them all of the weekends and school holidays, get 'em a football and kick 'em out

4) Stopped using the X-Box for DVD Playback. According to the specification it uses 80W - 110W for simple DVD playback, compared to 16W for playback from a £30 stand-alone DVD player

5) Changed the 420W current hungry Plasma TV for a LCD one which uses 135W

6) Cut down the use of the tumble dryer by about 50%, simply by hanging stuff out to dry (gets me away from the X-Box too)

7) Removed the 35W and 50W halogen downlighters (several in lounge and hallway) and replaced them with a pendant fitting and / or table lights, both with the aforementioned low energy lamps

8) Use an electric blanket to heat the bed (80w) as opposed to having a 2KW convector heating the room. I don't need the room at 20c for the 5 seconds it takes to walk from the bathroom to the bedroom

9) Switch Sky Box, TV, laptop, Router etc off at the mains when not in use.

10) Bought a digital thermometer from a car boot sale for £1, and keep the fridge / freezer on the lowest possible temperature setting required to maintain a 'safe' level.

11) Use a laptop rather than a full size PC and LCD monitor when I can. (28W for laptop compared to combined 114W drawn by full size PC and its separate 19" lcd monitor)

muffin_man_7

sammy_kaye18 wrote: »

Can I recommend the

saving on gas and electric thread

and the

preparing fro winter thread - usually on the first few forum pages.

Both have some good tips for saving gas/electric especially in the cold weather

sammy thanks for this i read the preparing for winter thread i havent a clue how to find the saving on gas and electric can you help with a link please thanks

cally6008

I've tried looking for the "saving on gas and electric" thread and can't find it either

Sunnydazey

1 little oil filled radiator which is on Oct-Feb/March as our flat is super hot

What is the power comsumption of this "little" radiator? This may be your answer. Does it have a timer and thermostat or does it blast out heat all the time? This could easily cost you 30p an hour. Maybe £2 per day for 6-7 hours heating per day.....etc.