Bulb, Economy 7 and general energy usage advice

Lisalouise1974

Hi All,

I live in a 1970's build house with storage heaters ( ggrrr ). We have open fields to the front of the house and the wind whips up a frenzy to the front of the house. Our current provider is Bulb. We have cavity wall insulation albeit very old and new UPVC windows ( three years ago - these made no difference if I am honest ). We have three bedrooms, an upstairs bathroom, none of these rooms have fixed heater of any sort, on our small landing we have a small simple storage heater, replaced 4 years ago, it has a simple input and output control, both are set to 1 - with the highest setting being 5 this unit is on normally Oct through to March. In our smallest bedroom where I work, I have a 2kwh heater which is set to low and is on three hours per day Monday to Friday only ( some days none at all ). Most days we also run a small 240v dehumidifier as we suffer really bad condensation.

Downstair we were open plan from the porch, but built a wall last year to block off the stairs and porch as it was so cold - this has been a great help. Our lounge dinner is open plan, this is heated by two dimples duo heaters - again on between Oct and March. We never use the comfort heat and the background input is set on each to half of the range. Our kitchen has a door but again no heating. We have a small fridge freezer - not even a full height one, a washer dryer, a small dishwasher and a oven. The washing machine is on 3 times a week, with one washer dryer cycle. I am already washing on the time saver setting and mostly at 30 degrees. Our dishwasher goes on every night both appliances are only run at night. We use the cooker / hob most nights for 30 an hour or so.

Our shower is a power shower which is run from an immersion, again only comes on at night - we never use the day boost function. We both have a shower daily for about 5 minutes. In the bathroom my partner ALWAYS ( ggrrr ) runs a small wall mounted fan heater for 15 minutes each morning but always on the E7 rate as normally at 6.30am.

According to bulb our estimated usage is 9107 KWH. Now for the rub, two years ago on bulb our prices were 15.18pkwh day, 7.23pkwh night, standing charge19.47, we used to pay £100 per month DD which pretty much covered us for the year, we used on average 35 kwh/day.

From next month it will be 32.985 day, 19.520 night, standing charge 38.004, we are now at 38 kwh on average per day, so up from 2 years ago but down from last years average of 41kwh per day.

We have just upped our DD to £250 a month, we are £175 in credit, I have done a search of other providers but none are beating Bulb.

So my questions are - do you think we can do anymore to reduce general consumption - we are both currently working full-time at home, so laptops and monitors on all day etc.

I have a smart meter - first generation I think, I used to monitor my consumption via the Bulb App, when they made my meter smarter in Nov 2021 it broke the App, i now live in dread awaiting each month's bill. I have chased and chased Bulb for an update on fixing the app and getting nowhere!!! I asked for an IHD and have had various excuses, you have the wrong meter, no one in our post room to send them out, they are out of stock etc etc , I have heard them all. I asked them to recommend a third party one but was told it wouldn't work with my meter! Any thoughts on this, never knowing what my consumption is until my monthly bill is so stressful.

The big question now, we have looked to change the heating. There is gas in the street, so know about the charge to connect in to the house, but was advised by a gas fitter that the cost of central heating would be 4k but because I have concrete floors downstairs, and I would have to flue through the roof, we are a terrace with no outside wall that are suitable, redecoration due to removing the storage heaters and replacing carpets and changing the electric aqua lisa gravity shower I would be looking at 10k plus in total. We only have a small back garden with no access as we are a terrace, so not sure what to do. Even if we could finance 10k is it even worth going over to gas given they are supposed to be being phased out? So maybe we should stay electric but a more controllable system, maybe infrared? I don't know anyone with these type of panel heaters, my partner who feels the cold terribly ( always used to GCH ) can't get his head around the radiant aspect of it heating the thing sin the room and not the air and I don't want to make a costly error by buying what might be a fad.

Lots of info, I realise and lots of question  - sorry in advance!! Any thoughts very much appreciated!!!

Thanks in advance

EssexHebridean

You should be able to take meter readings from the meter itself - post the make and model of your meter and someone will be able to give you the method! 

Lisalouise1974

EssexHebridean said:

You should be able to take meter readings from the meter itself - post the make and model of your meter and someone will be able to give you the method! 

I though this would be the case, it is so hard to get to though, outside in a cupboard behind a massive bush!!

QrizB

9000kWh/yr is pretty good for a three-bed house. Being a terrace will help. Do you know the split between day and night rate usage, and can you share it with us?

Realistically, and assuming that 7000kWh/yr of that is space heating, switching to gas might save you £800/yr, so payback of the £10k cost of fitting GCH will take 12 years. The savings will be less if you take advantage of the lower price to turn up the thermostat.

The cost does seem to include a few things that aren't directly tied to the GCH installation. Does your house need redecorating anyway?

If you stay with electricity, storage heaters are the cheapest-to-run of the common electric heating systems. Panel heaters, infra-red panels etc. will all cost more to run.

Another poster, @danrv , recently replaced his storage heaters with an air-to-air heat pump, see this thread. This has been his first winter and he's almost halved his electricity use. You'd need somewhere at the back of the house to put the outdoor unit but there's less disruption than fitting wet central heating and might be something to consider?

EssexHebridean

It's almost like they planned it that way!   

Another thing with E7 - obviously make sure that you maximise the use of the night rate. And really learn the ins and outs of how your storage heaters work too. They're all slightly different. If you do have at least some money to commit towards improving things then you could consider changing one of the existing heaters for a new High Heat Retention model =- the one I have is a Dimplex Quantum but there are other makes and models too. 

It's interesting that you say the new windows didn't improve things a lot - the biggest single change we've made to the heat retention of our flat was to change the old blown-unit windows for new ones a few years ago - the difference was noticeable literally overnight. 

Little things like closing curtains as soon as it gets dark (and opening them in the morning, particularly on sunny days) and lining curtains can make a surprising difference. 

Also I'd be thinking about things like - does the dishwasher need to go on daily? It seems very frequent allowing that your WM is only used around 3 times a week. Also there's been some discussion on here previously about shortened WM settings potentially using MORE power, or at least not making an appreciable saving - the theory being they agitate more and soak less. Can you cut down on the drying time though? I do dry towels but usually only 30 minutes or so just to fluff them up and take the worst of the moisture out of them. Also on the subject of washing - line dry whenever you can - it really helps reduce the condensation issues too! 

Gerry1

Gas would probably be a good investment.  Nobody knows what the price caps will be in October and thereafter, but it looks like the days of (relatively) cheap energy are gone forever.  The extra cost of electricity over gas likely to widen.  Don't even think about infra red or anything else that uses day rate electricity, nothing is more expensive.

It's also likely that E7 tariffs won't offer much saving when overnight demand is high because of EVs.  If demand is relatively consistent there won't be any need to stimulate use at night, and night time might even become the peak demand period.

When you come to sell, GCH will be a big attraction, especially if new builds can't have GCH or if new boilers are banned.

If you reject gas, HHR NSHs are probably the only realistic way to go: a heatpump could well be more expensive to install than gas and will cost more to run.

Lisalouise1974

EssexHebridean said:

It's almost like they planned it that way!   

Another thing with E7 - obviously make sure that you maximise the use of the night rate. And really learn the ins and outs of how your storage heaters work too. They're all slightly different. If you do have at least some money to commit towards improving things then you could consider changing one of the existing heaters for a new High Heat Retention model =- the one I have is a Dimplex Quantum but there are other makes and models too. 

It's interesting that you say the new windows didn't improve things a lot - the biggest single change we've made to the heat retention of our flat was to change the old blown-unit windows for new ones a few years ago - the difference was noticeable literally overnight. 

Little things like closing curtains as soon as it gets dark (and opening them in the morning, particularly on sunny days) and lining curtains can make a surprising difference. 

Also I'd be thinking about things like - does the dishwasher need to go on daily? It seems very frequent allowing that your WM is only used around 3 times a week. Also there's been some discussion on here previously about shortened WM settings potentially using MORE power, or at least not making an appreciable saving - the theory being they agitate more and soak less. Can you cut down on the drying time though? I do dry towels but usually only 30 minutes or so just to fluff them up and take the worst of the moisture out of them. Also on the subject of washing - line dry whenever you can - it really helps reduce the condensation issues too! 

We use the drying cycle just on pants and sock and then towels, everything else is either line dried when weather permits or on an airer internally. But I totally agree with your comments regarding the condensation, hence the dehumidifier, which actually provides quite a good source of additional warmth upstairs and at 240v is quite cheap to run.

Our dishwasher is a slim one, hence it goes on every night, it is always full though, both of us at home all day generates so many dishes, my partner must use 10 different cups a day, yet another thing to nag him about.

We don't have any curtain in our house, all windows are wooden shutters, not sure if this is good or bad, I do know it has made the condensation worse though as none of them are flush to the window all of them run along the outside edge of the windowsill, although the large patio door out to the garden in our dining room has nothing at all, we are not overlooked. I might invest in some, training the cats to bypass them to get to the cat flap will be another matter. 

I think the Dimplex Duo is the model behind the quantum, so might look at this - thanks for the tip.

Lisalouise1974

QrizB said:

9000kWh/yr is pretty good for a three-bed house. Being a terrace will help. Do you know the split between day and night rate usage, and can you share it with us?

Realistically, and assuming that 7000kWh/yr of that is space heating, switching to gas might save you £800/yr, so payback of the £10k cost of fitting GCH will take 12 years. The savings will be less if you take advantage of the lower price to turn up the thermostat.

The cost does seem to include a few things that aren't directly tied to the GCH installation. Does your house need redecorating anyway?

If you stay with electricity, storage heaters are the cheapest-to-run of the common electric heating systems. Panel heaters, infra-red panels etc. will all cost more to run.

Another poster, @danrv , recently replaced his storage heaters with an air-to-air heat pump, see this thread. This has been his first winter and he's almost halved his electricity use. You'd need somewhere at the back of the house to put the outdoor unit but there's less disruption than fitting wet central heating and might be something to consider?

My Feb(1st to 28th) bill split was 161 kwh day rate, 902 kwh night rate for the month, cost £168 as pre my April prices as quoted above, to contrast my August bill 104 kWh day rate, 215 kwh night rate. This seems pretty consistent % split between summer and winter

My house had new carpets, about three years ago and a new bathroom four years ago incorporating the existing aqualisa gravity fed shower - well the plumbing anyway, the shower was a like for like but new. We really really need a new kitchen and bits and pieces elsewhere but not an overhaul to extent of the imagination. 

The cost I was quoted for GCH as an approximate overall cost, including removal of the tank, the water thing in the loft and flue through the roof and making good the house but not including the work needed on the bathroom that would be an additional cost most likely.

I spent yesterday evening unplugging everything that we don't relay use, radios etc, the charger for our tooth brushes, the bose speaker, I am driving my partner potty!

EssexHebridean

Our dishwasher is also a slimline - and it goes on every third day as a rule. The mug you start the day with is the one you keep using in his house, ditto drinking glasses - why on earth would you need a fresh one each time?! Even when we were eating all meals in the house during the lockdowns we continued with pretty much the same every third day pattern. If you have pots and pans that take up a lot of space in there then consider washing those by hand every couple of days as that would drastically reduce how often the machine needed to run. 

Maybe suggest to your partner that they start by using the same mug for the morning, then getting a fresh one after lunch?