Electric Usage Meter

Ken68

Just been looking at a digital remote thermometer on Maplins site, thought it might read heat loss areas from outside the house. £34 quid. like a thermo camera but no pictures.

dc

Grade_A_Reject wrote:

Not quite. It shows you your *current* running costs per hour unlike your electricity meter which just shows you how much you have used. A bit like comparing your speedometer in your car which tells you how fast you are travelling with your odometer which simply records how many miles you have travelled.

The idea being that if you can see in real time what your appliances are drawing you will modify your usage patterns and save money.

Not quite, if you look at the rotating dial on your leccy meter, it will say so many revolutions per Kw. So in MSE mode all you have to do is time the disc to do one rev, muliply that by the revs/KW and voila you then know the current useage and can deduct running costs. The faster it goes round the higher the bill. It is also easy to economise by identifying appliances that makes it spin fastest, or see what slows it down most when you switch things off.
With a bit of practice, a few seconds looking will put you at ease or set the alarm bells ringing

espresso

Ken68 wrote:

Just been looking at a digital remote thermometer on Maplins site, thought it might read heat loss areas from outside the house. £34 quid. like a thermo camera but no pictures.

You must have missed this thread then Ken. It was an amazing deal at £4.99 but for £1.99 a absolute steal and very useful.

:T

Ken68

This is what I mean....

http://www.maplin.co.uk/search.aspx?MenuNo=77605&MenuName=THERMOMETERS&FromMenu=y&criteria=THERMOMETERS&doy=16m1&worldid=9

...thought if I c ranked up the heating then measured any heat loss from outside the house. Screwfix price is £69.
What does 8 to 1 mean.

asharon

I got one of ebay that is the same one as they sell in BandQ for £25 but it was £10 inc postage and was a buy it now. Not sure if there are more though.

Ken68

Do you mean my link, Asharon, in which case does it work.

Jo4

Jo4 wrote:

THANKS! I have sent you a pm.

THANKS notbritishgas :A for your email. :T My meter is now working again and I don't have to do the calculations myself. :j

suzysue_2

Grade_A_Reject wrote:

Not quite. It shows you your *current* running costs per hour unlike your electricity meter which just shows you how much you have used. A bit like comparing your speedometer in your car which tells you how fast you are travelling with your odometer which simply records how many miles you have travelled.

The idea being that if you can see in real time what your appliances are drawing you will modify your usage patterns and save money. You could argue that you could save as much just by simply switching all unused appliances off but once you get used to what your "normal" consumption is you can identify if things are not as they should be. I hadn't realised that my PC which I used to leave on overnight was costing approx 2p an hour to run.
that doesn't sound much but when you start to multiply that by the number of hours it was left on amounted to a considerable chunk of my bill.

I didn't know that. *will turn off all comps in future.*

Be_Happy

asharon wrote:

I got one of ebay that is the same one as they sell in BandQ for £25 but it was £10 inc postage and was a buy it now. Not sure if there are more though.

I bought the one from B & Q a few months ago. Came to use it recently and can't find the instructions. Can work out how to use the KW being consumed which is what I want, but can't get it reset to zero. Thought putting pen point in the hole marked R would do this, but it doesn't. Is there something else I should be doing?