is my housemate pushing the leccy bill up?

spinningsheep

Guys, I hope someone on here can tell me this, he always leaves his PC on, 24/7, sometimes in standby, sometimes not, and he is insistant that it uses next to no electricity and to turn it on and off actually uses more! Is he right? Personally I cant see it, and he says he cant turn it off at night as it downloads updates for his security package etc. Well I have my laptop on twice a week if that, and all my updates come down in the first 20 mins or so, so why he cant do that?? Anyway, I would love to know if he is eating all the electricity.

Secondly, is there any way of finding out, APPROX how much an appliance uses in electricity money wise? I have no idea how much I pay per KWhr etc etc, all I can tell you is that I am with NPower! I would switch,if it was cheaper,but I am in "arrears" with them as I pay by DD and the bill for the winter quarter was £500 for gas and electric, and theres only 2 of us in a 2 bed terrace!!

TheWaltons_3

Wow... you really are a MSE aren't you

:rotfl:

spinningsheep

howd u mean?

Andybez38

Of course he is pushing up your leccy bill. Why does he give a fcuk about if the computer is on 24/7. your housemate sounds like my son. if i had a quarterly bill for £500 i would be looking for a new housemate.

spinningsheep

Ok Andybez calm down! Was only asking

TheWaltons_3

spinningsheep wrote: »

howd u mean?

I was joking...

Yes the computer costs money to run... of course it does! What you should be thinking about, is how you're going to manage this without causing offence... as either your pal is oblivious to the cost of electricity he is using... or he's pulling a fast one!

Bagpuss1973

Hi spinningsheep

£500:eek: :eek: :eek: what on earth are you running in your home????

There are two of us and our computer is on practically all the time...our electric bill for the winter quarter £170. We also run TV's, electric shower, electric cooker and all our heating is electric...I just cannot imagine what you are running and believe me we are not stingy with our electric we have all our heating on to a nice comfy level - we never freeze! We don't have gas in this area so that is running everything.

I suggest you have a good look at what you are running, although I doubt the computer is to blame.

Cardew

You can buy from Maplins etc a power measuring meter.(NOT an electrisave) for around £15 - sometimes they are on EBAY cheaper and Lidl have done them for about £7.(or you might be able to borrow one?)

With these devices you simply plug in any device you want to measure and it will tell you how much power you have used.

Regarding PC consumption.

He is absolutely wrong about it using more electrity to switch on, than keeping it on. It might be worth keeping it on rather than switching off the PC for about 5 minutes - any longer and you save electricity by having it off.

He is also absolutely wrong about needing to keep it on for downloading packages for security etc. How do any of us manage?

It is difficult to say how much electricity a PC will use as it depends on the type. In very approx figures a PC fully on(but with the monitor off) will use approx 1p an hour.

You say he sometimes leaves it on standby. Well it depends what you mean by standby. If it is really on standby, switched on at socket, but off on PC and unable to operate, it uses very little - almost unmeasurable in money terms - pence per month.

I suspect what you mean he has set up some form of hibernation(power saving). That depends again on the PC but will reduce it considerably from 1p an hour.

But the bottom line is he has no reason to leave the PC on for the reasons he states but it is not the cause of your high bills.

Contains_Mild_Peril

According to the Government recycling ads, "Recycling just one glass bottle will save enough energy to power a washing machine for ten minutes, a television for 15 minutes, a computer for 20 minutes or run a light bulb for almost an hour" so if a computer uses (on average) about half as much electricity as a washing machine and about 3 times as much as a light bulb then yes, leaving it on permanently will use a lot of power. More to the point (at least from your housemate's POV) a computer left on all the time is likely to overheat and malfunction.
The old chestnut about computers taking more power to shut down and restart than to leave on may be true for time periods of a few minutes or less, but it's a myth that leaving any appliance on for long periods is cheaper than switching off and on.

spinningsheep

Hmmm, think i need to have words. The £500 bill was combined gas and electric, but in fairness the gas was the biggest contributer, £300 or so of the £500, but we did have the heating on pretty much 24/7 from November until Jan, and my housemate wasn't working so he was at home all day, hence the heating being on when I wasn't in, but thats a lesson learned, this winter, the heating will only go on if its BITTERLY cold. If its chilly we'll put an extra layer on. We're also going to get the chimmney swept and have a real fire in the living room, eliminating the need to have the heating on at all if we're only in the lounge! Am I right in thinking that coal is cheaper than gas? I am a !!!!!! for using the tumbledryer for clothes, so I only use it for towels and bedding now, everything else goes on a clothes horse or on the line. I have also bought a Dribuddy, off the telly on JML direct, it uses convection to dry the clothes and uses 1/3 of the electric of a tumbledryer, so if its rainy I can put my shirts in there if i need them in a hurry.

If I was to change supplier,what happens about the arrears I have with them, will they let me pay them off over time AND go elsewhere? Or do you think they would want all the money I owe them before they would let me change to someone else?

DKLS

Seems terribly high could it be a billing error? mines nowhere near that , the only reason why I can see that you would leave a pc on all night was to download mp3s and films from P2P sites, or if it was acting as a file/web server, which in a domestic isnt common.