Frugal fuel tips

maisie_cat

I must admit I've got obsessed with the food side of things, we do as much as we can including shower, heating economy and thermals. The only thing we could possibly do is Canadian window quilts as we only have blinds, and then only on a few windows. We have no near neighbours so no privacy issues unless somebody over the fields has a telescope and wants a shock!
Food is our flex item, I can easily switch to cheaper meals if need be, I could easily drop meat but hubby likes it, so when I cook it I give most to him anyway.
I always say to hubby when he worries about money that if we can afford wine we are okay, it's an easy thing to stop buying.
I've also been looking at the power consumption of the multicookers and today made a roast dinner without using the  hob or oven. The entire dinner of roast chicken, roast potatoes, mash and steamed veg consumed 0.8KW.
We are also going to be more organised with coppicing the woodland this year, we are currently burning wood we inherited that was green in 2019. We have pallets everywhere with wood in various stages of seasoning.
We don't need the heating on very much at all if we have the wood burner going in the sitting room.

Slinky

We have a couple of external lamps on the house, one being a security light by the front door which comes on when anybody goes past the house. They had old incandescent (?) bulbs in up until today; have swapped them out for low energy ones.  We also have a 'mother and child' lamp which was the main source of light in our lounge in the evening. The bulb was one where the light level increased when you twist the knob, so not low energy.  I swapped that round last month for another lamp with a lower (20w) bulb. I have tried using a lower wattage bulb in this lamp but it's too dim to read by unless you're sat right under it.

littlemoney

Small rooms are much easier and cheaper to keep warm. The trend to open plan living with very large rooms must be putting up heating bills. I almost turned two small rooms into one but I'm ever so pleased I didn't.

LadOnTheHill

Our dehumidifier is one of the best things we got gor this house. We had a problem with the render being cracked up under the eaves, which gave us damp problems constantly. We got the crack filled and put the dehumidifier in the room, it's not gone much above 60% humidity since. We keep the room closed and unheated, so there's not much chance for moisture to get back in. I put one of those white crystal moisture absorber boxes on the windowsill before Christmas, and it's still half full of crystal.

The model we have is the Inventor Rise. I can't recommend it highly enough. It uses about 330w on low, and can be set to dry the air out to 60% RH, 50%, 40% and also just run constantly. After a few hours on high, the air in a room is dry enough to shut the door and turn the rad off. Keeping a room warm will enable the air to hold more moisture. When the room cools, the moisture condenses out of the air onto surfaces and gives you damp. Take the moisture out of the air and get rid of it, and you can let the room get much cooler before you have a problem.

Pixiekazza

I bought a dehumidifier last year to help dry my washing, based on recommendations from this site. I don't have a tumble dryer so rely on it not raining and my heaters. I already wear clothes (apart from undies!) more than once if they aren't smelly/dirty. 

As it's not too cold I've turned my storage heaters off, so put the dehumidifier on 'dry' setting for a couple of hours on the pm cheap rate electric. It does make the room feel warmer amd dries my clothes :-) Think I'll be relying on my log burner for a bit. 

Effician

Found another way to save a few hundred watts whilst doing a washing machine load.

This time of year the kettle is always on the log burner , this means we always  have flasks full of hot water for drinks, cooking, washing up & hot water bottles but still find we have too much hot water.

It occured to me that as the washing machine is cold fill only the built in immersion heater was a running cost i could cut down on by filling the with hot water from the flasks before switching on. Yes it worked & cut the heater on time down by more than half on a 40c wash which also cut down the wash cycle time .

Having cut our energy costs by about 40% from last September from an already lowish usage the extra savings are getting harder to find but i do enjoy the challenge

Slinky

I've got in the habit of taking food out of the fridge to warm up to room temperature before paying to heat it in the oven or hob. OK so warming food will be stealing warmth from the air in the house, but it's not perceptible, and must be saving a little something on the bills.

joedenise

I do the same @Slinky.  I get it out of the fridge about an hour before I'm ready to start cooking.

Elmer_BeFuddled

Effician said:

It occurred to me that as the washing machine is cold fill only ........

Which genius thought cold fill only wash m/c's were a good idea when you have a gas combi boiler which gives (nearly) instant cheap hot water as opposed to using (expensive) electric to heat the water? Even worse, which twonks listened to them?

Moorviews

In the past I have been disorganised and defrosted food at room temperature or in water to speed up the thawing process. I now defrost food in the fridge to help with reducing the electricity the fridge uses. I have to remember to get food out of the freezer up to two days earlier though! A bonus  effect is that I am much more organised about meal planning.