High annual usage for gas & electricity?

yimpster

Hi peeps,

Doing a major check up on our gas/electric usage as I think it's incredibly high.

I just did a meter read and got a new bill our annual usage is Gas @ 28000 kWh and Electricity @ 12,000 kWh.

I live in a 1930's brick house. Three adults and 2 kids (one under the age of 3). A new loft extension with insulation was built a few years ago.

Rear extension is new but very hard to heat - always v cold in the mornings.

We have hard laminate floors down stairs and carpet up stairs.

With kids, washing machine goes on most days on 30 deg. Tumble dryer used regularly when clothes horse is full. Dish washer every couple of days.

We have an outbuilding that is used a couple of times a week and heated using electric when needed.

I have a PC that is left on 24/7 (part of my job).

I try to keep lights off when not in use. The rest of the family are pretty good with this rule.

Do these figures seem outrageous or should I be concerned?

I am in the process of changing tariff but don't think it will make much difference if the usage is still high.

I wonder if there is something I can do as i'm currently spending almost £2.5k a year :eek:

Norman_Castle

Tumble dryer used regularly when clothes horse is full.

A second clothes horse might help.

Yorkie1

The gas does sound quite high, but I live in a similar house to yours although I have floorboards (draughty). My annual gas kWh is about 22,500 despite insulating everything else. Can't recall what my electricity is but it does sound as though the white goods might be bumping up the usage there.

I've got a heated drier from Lakeland. It's about £80 now, I think, and has 3 levels that open horizontally in pairs. It doesn't cost that much to run and gets clothes dry pretty quickly. However keep an eye open for condensation / mould unless you ventilate properly when using it (same as when using the standard clothes horse).

HappyMJ

Agreed dryers use a lot of electricity. Do you have an outdoor area in which you can dry clothes such as a clothes line?

yimpster

Norman_Castle wrote: »

A second clothes horse might help.

Already purchased from costco last month. it's huge

i think the dryer has been used once since then!!

yimpster

i think the draughts are coming from under the house - though i may be wrong. Is there anything I can do to insulate the gap between the floorboards and the ground?

HappyMJ

yimpster wrote: »

i think the draughts are coming from under the house - though i may be wrong. Is there anything I can do to insulate the gap between the floorboards and the ground?

Carpet? Rugs? Heat rises so you won't have too much wasted heat downwards. It just feels like it comes from there as that's the airflow of the house. The cooler air would normally come through the window vents.

dogshome

From what you descibe, this house is built with the floor joists resting on brick pillars, with the gap between the ground and the underside of the boards being ventilated by air bricks on opposing sides of the house

It's meant to be this way and any attempt to insulate below the floorboards that stops the airflow, will result in severe rot problems.
Your hardwood flooring should stop draughts coming up through the floorboards, but they are not much of an insulator - Carpeting laid over a Felt Underlay is a reasonably good insulator

yimpster

thanks for the replies so far.

can anyone comment on my annual consumption? do the figures seem ok considering the usage?

yimpster

dogshome wrote: »

From what you descibe, this house is built with the floor joists resting on brick pillars, with the gap between the ground and the underside of the boards being ventilated by air bricks on opposing sides of the house

It's meant to be this way and any attempt to insulate below the floorboards that stops the airflow, will result in severe rot problems.
Your hardwood flooring should stop draughts coming up through the floorboards, but they are not much of an insulator - Carpeting laid over a Felt Underlay is a reasonably good insulator

i think that is correct. the gap is a couple of feet high and there are brick pillars. it's a real shame we can't do anything other than replacing the flooring with carpet

dogshome

You don't have to replace your present hardwood floor, in fact it's helping by stopping draughts blowing up thro' the gaps in the floorboards - Lay a carpet over Felt Underlay directly on top.

As has been already posted, an insulated floor is only solving a small part of the problem, and in any case goes nowhere near an answer to the huge Elec consumption.

The Gas
Insulated Loft extension built a few years ago?
Building Codes have changed a lot in recent years, so it's probably worth looking at just how well this loft is insulated
Whist the more recent extension should be OK, which I assume is single storey, any building that's got 2/3 outside walls and a roof exposed to outside to weather, will drop to ambient temperatures overnight if it's not heated