Economy 7 tips & tricks

Gerry1

Dannii75 said:

Gerry1 said:

Dannii75 said:

Deleted_User said:

Dont have your immersion heater on all night on economy 7, put it on when you get up in the mornings ( thats if you are an early bird like me) I put mine on for 1-2 hours every morning and theres enough hot water in the tank to last all day. I was going to get a timer fitted but it was far too expensive @ £100!!!!!  

Only fill the kettle with the amount of water you need.
Turn off everything that has a standby light.

Change light bulbs to led.

Keep curtains closed during cold weather to keep the heat in.

Turn heating down a notch.

Only do a full load in washing machine, on a lower heat setting. Do a quick wash 20 or 30 mins, longer washes are not needed, you wouldnt stand at a sink washing clothes for 1-2 hours so why use a machine for that length of time.

If you have to use a dryer add a dry towel into the damp clothes as it helps dry the clothes quicker.

My boiler is decades old, not the most efficient, but there's no options to turn it on/ off. At this rate I'll never be able to save enough £ to replace the old system either but that's a whole other issue! 

The heating in the house is with night storage heaters, again, very old but they work so I'm OK with that.

Now, the washing machine, I put it on the 'quick wash' this morning at 30C, it took an hour, that's madness! I assumed it would be a 30min wash! I might experiment with other settings to find the quickest wash! 
(no dryer here, too expensive & it's only me so I can deal with outdoor drying etc).

Cheers! 

It must be always be possible to turn the boiler off, if only for safety reasons.

Assuming the boiler is gas or oil, why are you using using storage heaters?  They will certainly be more expensive than gas central heating.  If you don't have radiators, they would be worth considering assuming the boiler is large enough.

oh yes, there's an on/ off switch sorry, it's like a light switch on the wall just outside the room with the boiler in it. 
there's no gas supply in the house so everything's electric. 

Sounds more like a hot tank with an immersion heater.  If so, make sure it's on an E7 circuit otherwise you'll be paying day rate which is even more expensive than singe rate.

If there's a second heater half way up it's probably on a 24h circuit, so make sure it's left permanently off unless you run out of hot water during the day, e.g. if you've been away.

Section62

Deleted_User said:

Dont have your immersion heater on all night on economy 7, put it on when you get up in the mornings ( thats if you are an early bird like me) I put mine on for 1-2 hours every morning and theres enough hot water in the tank to last all day. I was going to get a timer fitted but it was far too expensive @ £100!!!!!

It needs to be stressed that this should only be done by people who don't have a timer, since there's a risk of leaving the immersion on heating water all day at peak rate if you rely on remembering to switch it off.  A timer is more reliable at switching off than us humans.

Deleted_User said:

Only do a full load in washing machine, on a lower heat setting. Do a quick wash 20 or 30 mins, longer washes are not needed, you wouldnt stand at a sink washing clothes for 1-2 hours so why use a machine for that length of time.

Because generally these long programmes are 'eco' - they use less energy and water than faster washes by leaving the items soaking with only occasional agitation.  Faster washes typically use more water and energy to produce similar results in less time, or often have smaller maximum loads.  Checking the manual for energy and water consumption for each programme is essential to working out which is best for a particular situation.