It's time to start digging up those Squirrelled Nuts!!!!

jimi_man

Sea_Shell said:

Just looked up the figures and our annual usage to date is roughly...

Gas - 8000 kwh
Elec - 1500 kwh

2 adults, 1990s 4 bed detached, East Midlands

System Boiler (2021)
Dual fuel oven/hob
No Dishwasher
No Tumble Dryer
No electric shower


So as you can imagine, I'm just as flabbergasted at those who use shed loads more than us, as those who are flabbergasted at us!! 


It seems, like all our other costs, they are just low.  We don't actively try to make them low, they just are, because of how we live/are.

So, how low could we get everything IF we HAD to!!!?

Out of interest what temperature is your house? 

We used to have it at 21, we’ve now dropped it to around 19 in the evening but we’ve only had to switch the heating in a couple of times for a couple of hours each time, since April. We wear lots of clothing - thermals pretty much all winter till around March for me. 

Sea_Shell

jimi_man said:

Sea_Shell said:

Just looked up the figures and our annual usage to date is roughly...

Gas - 8000 kwh
Elec - 1500 kwh

2 adults, 1990s 4 bed detached, East Midlands

System Boiler (2021)
Dual fuel oven/hob
No Dishwasher
No Tumble Dryer
No electric shower


So as you can imagine, I'm just as flabbergasted at those who use shed loads more than us, as those who are flabbergasted at us!! 


It seems, like all our other costs, they are just low.  We don't actively try to make them low, they just are, because of how we live/are.

So, how low could we get everything IF we HAD to!!!?

Out of interest what temperature is your house? 

We used to have it at 21, we’ve now dropped it to around 19 in the evening but we’ve only had to switch the heating in a couple of times for a couple of hours each time, since April. We wear lots of clothing - thermals pretty much all winter till around March for me. 

The thermostat in the hall is set at 16c and turned down to 14c over night, but then on a timer (7am-9pm)

It came on for the first time this morning.

Yesterday evening, just when we heard it go off, the thermometer in the lounge said 20c (in with the doors closed).  

We always wear jumpers, socks, slippers and have blankets for watching TV .

We usually just start to feel a little too warm, just as it clicks off.  So we've got it about right.

NannaH

125kwh for a month of electric is exeptionally low!
I used 193kwh this October vs 222kwh last October, £11 less by my reckoning.   Average 6.2kwh per day.  Electric oven accounts for probably 2kwh of that. 

Albermarle

cfw1994 said:

Sea_Shell said:

In energy news...well my news anyway...

Just goes to show how mild October has been, as going by my spreadsheet, we used only 24m³ of gas this October, as opposed to 31m³ last October.

This equates (roughly*) to a saving of £6.68.


7m³ x 11.2 = 78.4 kwh x 8.53p = 668.75p = £6.68


*This isn't the technical calculation, but close enough.  

Electricity was unaltered at 125 kwh for the month.

Wowsa...that is impressive.  I know everyone's house is different, but I think we use around 6-8x your amount of gas 😱
(eta - just checked Octopus app - Oct was 115m³ for us, so not quite as bad as I thought......still not great!!!)

However....since having 15kW of batteries installed recently, it looks like we now get 97% of our electricity at our Octopus off-peak rate....which is pretty acceptable!

That is a high gas usage ! I thought ours was high, being about 75% higher than what is deemed typical, ( 1910 M3 in 2021)  but we 'only' used 75 M3 in October ( compared to a 131 last October) . ( 4 bed / 3 bath , older semi. One bedroom/bathroom only used occasionally. Three adults usually, quite a lot of hot water use. No sitting watching the TV wrapped in blankets 

Albermarle

Daffodil1234 said:

Interesting comments on gas / elec usage, this does vary so much.

We had smart meters installed earlier this year, which led to a decrease in the monthly direct debit.  Our estimated annual usage for 2022 is:
Gas - 3115 kwh
Elec - 2605 kwh

2 adults, 1910 3 bed detached.

Combi boiler - 2014
Elec oven / grill and gas hob, plus gas fire in living room

We do use a dishwasher and also dehumidifiers sometimes when needing help with drying washing.
No tumble dryer.

We do have an electric shower

However we do have a LOT of thick socks, base layers, fleecy throws etc for sitting on the sofa, and some blankets for layers on the bed. I work from home and one of the biggest differences for me is wearing slippers and thick socks - slippers with a thick sole - once my feet are warm, I stay warm !

That is incredibly low gas usage, considering you have a gas combi boiler, and other gas appliances.
It is about a quarter of what is deemed typical for an average house.
The electricity usage is more typical though.

Kim1965

3 bed semi bungalow
 2021 consumption
14400kwh gas
3900kwh electricity
 2022  annualised consumption
7900kwh gas
2100kwh electricity. 
Fitted new boiler combi this year (2 months ago). This year i turned off a pond pump, garage fridge, daughter moved out. Stopped using dishwssher. Have a log burner and maily burn free construction timber offcuts. 

Stargunner

Sea_Shell said:

Well, take just now for instance...

We're both sitting watching (sky) TV, in the same room with a lamp with an 11w CF bulb.   The rest of the house is in darkness.

As for gas, we hardly needed any heating during October, and just one "charge" of hot water each morning, plus some cooking (hob).

We don't run the hot tap to wash our hands, and don't have long showers.   I do have a weekly bath after a long run treat!! when we need to reheat a tank full.

When it's sunny and mild, we get a lot of solar heat from a west facing conservatory.    It gets shut off in cold weather.

We had a new boiler last July, so already in place for last October.


I don't feel we do anything extreme, and haven't really changed our habits since last year.

We're naturally 😇

Not turning your hot tap on to wash your hands, not being prepared to cook a roast as the oven will be on too long and sitting in the house wrapped in blankets sounds rather extreme to me.

Sea_Shell

Stargunner said:

Sea_Shell said:

Well, take just now for instance...

We're both sitting watching (sky) TV, in the same room with a lamp with an 11w CF bulb.   The rest of the house is in darkness.

As for gas, we hardly needed any heating during October, and just one "charge" of hot water each morning, plus some cooking (hob).

We don't run the hot tap to wash our hands, and don't have long showers.   I do have a weekly bath after a long run treat!! when we need to reheat a tank full.

When it's sunny and mild, we get a lot of solar heat from a west facing conservatory.    It gets shut off in cold weather.

We had a new boiler last July, so already in place for last October.


I don't feel we do anything extreme, and haven't really changed our habits since last year.

We're naturally 😇

Not turning your hot tap on to wash your hands, not being prepared to cook a roast as the oven will be on too long and sitting in the house wrapped in blankets sounds rather extreme to me.

Each to their own.

It's not never, just not regularly.

Anyway, I'm not going to justify myself further.

german_keeper

We are lucky to be on a 2 year fix from Sept 21. But I have still been trying to make some sensible adjustments. The air fryer is great and much healthier too. But the thing that has really struck me is how often I would just turn a light on when there is really no need to. Certainly in the summer I would spend an hour or two in the kitchen preparing food, putting stuff in the washing machine, dishwasher and the like and realising that the natural light was perfectly sufficient for what I was doing. And even now so often I will go into a room for only a few seconds and even though it's a bit dark there really is no need to turn the light on. I think it's probably just a habitual reaction to flick the switch when you enter the room.    

Albermarle

Kim1965 said:

3 bed semi bungalow
 2021 consumption
14400kwh gas
3900kwh electricity
 2022  annualised consumption
7900kwh gas
2100kwh electricity. 
Fitted new boiler combi this year (2 months ago). This year i turned off a pond pump, garage fridge, daughter moved out. Stopped using dishwssher. Have a log burner and maily burn free construction timber offcuts. 

You have done well to reduce your energy consumption so much, although you will not endear yourself to the greens using a log burner......
Wood burning at home now biggest cause of UK particle pollution | Air pollution | The Guardian