2022 Frugal Living Challenge

CCW007

@zafiro1984 Speak to your water company about whether you qualify for a reduction due to "non return to sewer" - they should have a form for you to complete if you do qualify.

zafiro1984

Floss said:

https://www.ofwat.gov.uk/households/your-water-bill/unmetered/

Just rung the water company and a very nice gentleman explained that we only pay for metered water coming onto the property with no charge for sewage, runoff water etc. Apparently, it has been like this for years as our lane and many other lanes round here are on this system as they recognise that there are no mains drains and no road surface drains either around here. 

By the way we have no mains gas here either. I feel like we live in a little backwater - but at least it's quiet and you can hear the birds sing.

Regarding my cooking batch to beat the electric costs over the summer, ie the venison casserole I made yesterday.
Yesterday's tea was the casserole and very acceptable it was too - I found a bit of red wine lurking from earlier in the week so added that as well.
Today I froze 6 x 2person casserole, to be used with a pastry topping or dumplings or just as it is, all labelled and dated (that's where I usually fail and sometimes we have to have 'Guess the contents'. My worst guess was a bag of 'small cocktail onions' which I added frozen to a casserole, they turned out to be gooseberries) - uck

Floss

And at least you know now 😉

otb666

@cw18 @Living_proof £30 to £60 per month. Fridge freezers use 2 to 4 units in 24 hours is the norm.  The fridge freezer guides All makers use a test standard that is flawed The only way you will ever get even close to their annual figure is to have a fully stocked [ jam packed full ] fridge freezer and never ever open the door for 12 months.  My point was that say if you have picked free blackberries in there from summer all year They are no longer free and would cost you £30 for the year to store.  When electric costs so much we may go back to having an under counter fridge with small freezer compartment as we may not be able to afford to store food like we have done in the past Let alone cook from frozen (like the Iceland man said in the news) We may have to go back in time where we would do weekly shops and leave the freezer costs for supermarkets to maintain

maisie_cat

otb666 said:

@cw18 @Living_proof £30 to £60 per month. Fridge freezers use 2 to 4 units in 24 hours is the norm.  The fridge freezer guides All makers use a test standard that is flawed The only way you will ever get even close to their annual figure is to have a fully stocked [ jam packed full ] fridge freezer and never ever open the door for 12 months.  My point was that say if you have picked free blackberries in there from summer all year They are no longer free and would cost you £30 for the year to store.  When electric costs so much we may go back to having an under counter fridge with small freezer compartment as we may not be able to afford to store food like we have done in the past Let alone cook from frozen (like the Iceland man said in the news) We may have to go back in time where we would do weekly shops and leave the freezer costs for supermarkets to maintain

I plugged my 2015 fridge freezer into a plug in meter on 12th February. It has used 26.59 kwh in 41 days, so around .65kwh/day. The chest freezer in the garage uses 0.35kwh/day. Between them is 33p a day all in new rates for me.

otb666

@maisie_cat after October we will all have to evaluate what we do leccy wise and may be worth considering different options  and talking about the impact of what we do now.  We have become overly dependent  on bigger and more electric appliances and may have to go back to what was used when I was growing up in the 1970s.  When will it be more expensive and therefore not cost effective to store food.  Just because thats what always been done does not make it the right thing to do going forward and we will have to learn to change and adapt ourselves accordingly.  Love this forum as good read

Living_proof

I have two 5’ beko  freezers in the garage which are jam packed and only opened briefly 2 or 3 times a week. The Bosch huge fridge freezer in the kitchen is accessed much more frequently and yet my bills are really low so I can’t think that my food storage is costing me anywhere near the amount I save by judicious purchases and freezing Olio foods. 

spudsmum

otb666 said:

@cw18 @Living_proof £30 to £60 per month. Fridge freezers use 2 to 4 units in 24 hours is the norm.  The fridge freezer guides All makers use a test standard that is flawed The only way you will ever get even close to their annual figure is to have a fully stocked [ jam packed full ] fridge freezer and never ever open the door for 12 months.  My point was that say if you have picked free blackberries in there from summer all year They are no longer free and would cost you £30 for the year to store.  When electric costs so much we may go back to having an under counter fridge with small freezer compartment as we may not be able to afford to store food like we have done in the past Let alone cook from frozen (like the Iceland man said in the news) We may have to go back in time where we would do weekly shops and leave the freezer costs for supermarkets to maintain

Hmmm not sure about this. 

I have 4 freezers and 2 large fridges and my power bill on the new rates is £150 based on readings not estimates. If I'm understanding correctly then by those calculations all or the majority of my consumption would be down to my fridges and freezers? 

If that was the case my power consumption would also be fairly static through the year (as the freezers are always on) but its definitely not the case - my consumption through the summer is fairly low and only rises significantly in winter when I have the heating on a lot more.

How is everyone doing - I've had an extremely Frugal week - largely because I've been laid up all week with norovirus so not been out to spend anything but no visits to the pantry either. Finally on the mend now and looking forward to seeing how my husband has managed mothers day on a Frugal budget. 

cw18

otb666 said:

@cw18 @Living_proof £30 to £60 per month.  Fridge freezers use 2 to 4 units in 24 hours is the norm.

Absolute tosh!

I'm running a freezer AND a fridge freezer as well as all my other appliances/devices, and my daily average consumption for electricity in 2021 was only just over 4kWh.

zafiro1984

cw18 said:

 my daily average consumption for electricity in 2021 was only just over 4kWh.

Wow just over 4kw daily, how do you do that? I thought I was frugal getting mine down from over 20kw a day in 2021 to just over 14kw daily this year. I must be missing a few tricks.

A bit more space occupied in the freezer today, made 30 pork and apple sausage rolls, slightly undercooked them so when reheated they will look less pasty - more sunny brown.