The Great 'Energy & MoneySaving' Hunt

davidanddeirdre

youth_leader wrote: »

I'm really worried about our electricity bill - our house has electric and oil only.

We have an old railway station which is listed, only a II so no grants available. It's been a money drain since day one fourteen years ago, and we haven't been able to afford to double glaze 'inside' the windows as I would have liked.

When my mother died she left me some money and I used the money to buy an oil aga, cooking only.

We are currently using about 1000 kwh a month and I need to drastically reduce this as our income is going to plummet in January.

Does anyone know if there are any lists of the running costs of white goods anywhere please? I'm also trying to find out how much it costs to run my son's tropical fish tanks. Thank you.

It's time consuming, but you need to check where it is all going- with electricity this is relatively easy, you take meter readings at frequent intervals against what is running and from the info figure out what savings can be made. Presumably you could put a flow meter in the Aga oil feed, and take readings from that.

Then based on what you find, take steps to reduce usage.

Heating in its various forms is the biggest domestic user of power by a long way. What eats electric? Hot water, tumble driers, house heating (if relevant) are biggies. Look at hot water. Where is it used and how can you economise? Can you isolate parts of the house you do not need to keep warm and close off the radiators there? Can you do without a tumble drier and go back to the old fashioned low tech hanging out the washing? Can you put in wall insulation? We have solid walls, but all of them now have a thin laye of polystyrene sheet (available from B&Q) under the wallpaper. This makes a big difference.

Since we got solar panels I have been anal about energy use especially electricity. We don't have electric heating or a tumble drier. The biggest single user by a mile is our fan oven, we can easily use 5 to 10 units in a day's baking session when the sun isn't shining.

Uniscots97

Bumping this as I think this is an important item for all of us if it helps us save some pennies on our bills.

Dazzle1990

I agree in the need to take action ourselves and not rely on government politics and large multi-national companies to reduce our energy bills.

There are lots of little measures you can take to reduce bills. Its just about speculating to accumulate.

I appreciate some have paybacks which make people cringe but I came across a new British product called EndoTherm.

EndoTherm is like an additive inhibitor but saves 15% on heating bills and they have had this proven apparently.

At £36 it states it has a 4-6 month payback (slightly less than double glazed windows haha)

Google EndoTherm I suppose to find the manufacturer

zeupater

Dazzle1990 wrote: »

I agree in the need to take action ourselves and not rely on government politics and large multi-national companies to reduce our energy bills.

There are lots of little measures you can take to reduce bills. Its just about speculating to accumulate.

I appreciate some have paybacks which make people cringe but I came across a new British product called EndoTherm.

EndoTherm is like an additive inhibitor but saves 15% on heating bills and they have had this proven apparently.

At £36 it states it has a 4-6 month payback (slightly less than double glazed windows haha)

Google EndoTherm I suppose to find the manufacturer

Hi

However, the science and the conclusion don't seem to match. Looking at their 'How it works', they simply fail to recognise that a bath of water takes xkWh to raise the temperature from yC to zC .... using the additive may have enabled the bath to reach the control temperature in 85% of the time of tapwater .... but, it would have effectively taken the same amount of energy input .... once more, to maintain the temperature of the bath, the energy input requirement would be exactly the same.

Even if the results of the experiment are correct, the only claim which could reasonably be made from those results is that the central heating system would reach the thermostatic operating temperature 15% faster than plain tap water (with no other inhibitors/additives), and of course, with any claimed performance enhancement only applying to the heat transfer from source to fluid, it makes absolutely no difference in the transfer of heat from the system to the building itself ....

So, 15% faster to thermostatic set point ?, possibly in a well conceived and controlled test environment, but almost certainly not in the real world .... up to 15% saving ?, well, on a scale from nothing to 15%, it'll be closer to nothing than you would likely be able to measure .....

Can you still buy from a snake oil salesman ??, obviously so, it seems.

HTH
Z

silverwhistle

That was a very polite reply from you Z!

zeupater

silverwhistle wrote: »

That was a very polite reply from you Z!

Hi

... I do try to provide logical reasoning to back-up my views, that way anyone reading can follow why many claims are unreasonable instead of just seeing a simple spam or snake-oil alert ....

At some time or other the purveyors of items backed with 'dodgy' claims and science will recognise that having been shown to be suspect on popular boards such as these which tend to appear high on search engine lists and learn that it's best to stay well clear instead of continually shooting themselves in the foot ...

If the above post was deliberate spam, then I doubt that it would be seen as being a very productive act .... probably the exact opposite!

HTH
Z

moxter

Out of the school of the bleeding obvious perhaps, but just being organised helps a long way.

Case in point is the tumble dryer. Ours mostly gets used when we've forgotten to put a wash on until we're out of pants, then forgotten to take out said pants to dry overnight, so we get up to go to work with wet pants and half an hour to spare. Half an hour of unnecessary tumble drying follows.

Winter is a tricky time because steam from showers etc can end up causing big condensation/damp problems. If you have an extractor fan, use it - you don't want to open windows to help clear condensation only to then need to use central heating to warm up the blasts of freezing air that you've let in!

Use a microwave rather than the oven/hob to heat things where possible (eg soup) but there are limits: I wince every time I see my mother in law heating her croissants in the oven, which results in a soggy mess. Baked potatoes fare far better in the oven, but again a compromise here is good - say 5 minutes in the µwave followed by half an hour in the oven works pretty well depending on size.

Shower rather than bath obviously and keep those showers short.

Put an extra blanket on your bed in winter.

Soak your dishes (in cold water) before washing them (whether by hand or dishwasher). If d/w then there's less of a chance you'll have to put them through a second time.

Do turn lights off, but don't fall asleep on the sofa all night with the lights still on, or your obsessive running around turning things off looks a bit stupid.

skyled

When I roast a piece of meat/bake a pie etc in the oven, I put the veggies in covered casserole dishes in with the roast. Obviously you need to practice to get timing right etc, but why use separate gas/electric rings for peas, 'taters and carrots when they can go in together? Small diced carrot can go in with frozen peas, chunkier carrot with boiled taters and so on!

skyled.com.vn - den led

Brewer20

I can't help but smile at what I've seen on the latest Martin Lewis TV programme Tues 22nd Nov 16.

Yes this thread is old and some good tips here but we have been doing most stuff suggested here for ages.

Getting to the latest TV MSE programme it was all about saving/cutting your energy bills, namely gas and electric. Where I started smiling was when some were saying they cut their bills by £180 to £800+ on the programme. The lady in particular that saved over £800, by gads my energy bill in total (gas/electric) is nowhere near £800 anyway.
My neighbour also says we've had a new boiler fitted our gas bill (gas only) is now down to only £40 per month. We live in the same type of house even have the same make/model boiler (fitted new 2 months ago) theirs was fitted 4 months ago. Our total gas/electric usage payment is currently £41, going up (winter payment) to £47. We are on a fixed deal with Npower until June 2018, they offered this straight off when I contacted them, it did shock me when I learned of the new tariff and price per month I would be paying, in a nice way of course.
To get our usage down to what we are on today it's not been a question of sitting around freezing and wearing 3 pullovers etc and dare not flick that heating switch to on. We do have our heating on, we do cook with with gas, and eat well and only wear one pullover etc. It's all about management of what gas/electric you use and I don't think some have the time and/or the inclination to do something about it.
Going back to the lady in the programme, they never said what dwelling she has, but guessing it's either a 10 bed mansion somewhere in the Outer Hebrides or she heats the whole street in a 3 bed semi with her doors and windows wide open 24/7 and heating cranked up to max.

I hope they get around to showing folk how to use the energy they've now get on a cheaper deal for them, then maybe they can save loads more. Maybe for a later show.

One TV/radio ad that makes me smile from British Gas that's on right now. It says save on your heating bills by installing an app, it's £9 per month. Err that's £108 per year off your saving straight away isn't it, or have I got it all wrong.